Inhuman Nature
by William Easley
Summary: June 19-23, 2017: Mabel goes into high gear planning the greatest Summerween party of all time, right there in the Shack! Everyone is invited! Every . . . THING is not, but may show up anyway. Probably Wendip will rear its head. You know how those two are.
1. Chapter 1

I_ do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you._

* * *

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**1: Ghouls, Goulash, and Galoshes**

That week many of the oldest laws in Gravity Falls vanished from the books, mourned by nobody. No longer was it legal to hunt wolves solely whilst armed with a fork (one of Quentin Trembley's, less effective because his questionable syntax left it unsettled whether the hunter or the wolf had to be so armed). Males over the age of twenty-one now had the legal choice to wear pants if they wished (the town had nullified the Depantsification Proclamation). Any traffic or other fines henceforth had to be paid in legal tender, not in dill pickles.

One thing that the Council left untouched, though, was Gravity Falls's peculiar legal holiday: Summerween. By tradition, it always fell on the fourth Friday of June, except when the fourth Friday was the last Friday, in which case it was the previous Friday, or if something else big was on, it might be moved to Saturday or Monday. Somehow they followed that, though you or I would need a ball of yarn and a compass to do it.

Anyhow and anyway, and what does it matter, in 2017 Summerween fell very neatly on June 23, the fourth Friday in the month and also the next to last one. With a reluctant sigh, Mabel had given up on trick-or-treating with her brobro a couple of years before, but nothing said they couldn't still wear costumes and go to—or even host—a fabulous Summerween party.

So this year that's what they planned to do. Soos and Melody said the kids could have it at the Shack. They'd be taking little Harmony and Little Soos door-to-door trick-or-treating. Abuelita would answer the door if the Shack had any small-fry monsters and princesses. And in the parlor, kids fifteen and up would celebrate in their own way, by getting stupid, taking dangerous dares, and dancing to what Mabel billed as "the scariest tunes of the seventies, eighties, and nineties!"

Dipper was pumped. Well, mildly interested. Wendy thought it would be fun—"Gonna be college kids this fall, all serious and junk, so this is, like, one last blow-out while we're still teens. Well, nearly all three of us are teens!"

In fact, she had turned twenty in May. But—as Mabel pointed out—she'd had to be the Woman of the House for the Corduroy dad and sons for so long that she was owed at least a couple extra honorary teen years.

Word of the party got out to the general community—to the extent that Grunkle Stan complained the Teen Center dance was gonna be a flop. However, Mabel said, "Come on, Grunkle Stan! There's always a way to con money out of marks. Close it to teens! Say that only couples twenty-one and older can come, sponsor a sexy costume all-adults masquerade contest, book some nostalgia acts, and advertise it as "Make Gravity Falls Sixteen Again!"

And Stan's eyes lit up with a faint accompanying "ka-ching!" sound effect.

But for the party she wanted to plan, Mabel's whole goal was to invite teens from the town and valley who were interested in partying, who wanted to have fun, fun, fun, and who would dance, flirt, play special games—spin the bottle, seven minutes in heaven, pass the orange, Twister and its cousin untie the knot, spaghetti-stick dance-off, blindfold treasure hunt (girls against boys), truth, truth, lie, and—if everyone was comfortable—split-off sessions of truth or dare.

Meanwhile, if Mabel could find someone to DJ—or, alternatively, if she could put together a couple of suitable playlists that would run for like an hour each unattended—they'd have an awesome dance in the big parlor, refreshments (appropriately spook-themed) in the museum and dining room, ghost stories in the bonfire clearing, and maybe some outside activities on the lawn, weather and trick-or-treaters permitting.

Oh, and a Costume Parade. And maybe some other activities.

Teek got put in charge of refreshments—stuff that wouldn't spoil, wouldn't need to be heated (hot dip served in a crock-pot cooker excepted), and drinks that would be age-appropriate, at least when set out, provided nobody spiked them or sprinkled Smile Dip in them or anything like that, not that Mabel considered that for a moment . . . .

Mabel's planning started the weekend before, when she had more strategic planning sessions, just as she had with their grunkles' birthday party. "Mabel," Dipper complained on the Monday of that week, "don't you think you're taking this a little too seriously?"

"Having fun is serious work, Broseph!" she retorted. "Are we still banned in the Summerween store? We're gonna need some decorations."

"I think we're cool if Grunkle Stan and Soos don't come with us," Dipper said.

"Hmm. We'll go over there this afternoon. But just to be on the safe side, I think we need to go in disguise. I'll be Natalie Attired, fashion model. You be Penn Name. I'll wear a blonde wig and heels, you wear my Mabel wig, a fake mustache, and mirror shades . . . "

"That sounds like a terrible idea."

"Phlbbt! Then it's a great idea! You have terrible taste in ideas!"

"No, I don't!"

"OK, we can't use the Shack credit card, which means we need cash. So we'll hit the ATM first. I'll chip in a hundred if you will."

"Better do it, dude," Wendy advised. "Or we'll never hear the end of it."

"Here's . . . another idea," Dipper said. "Let Wendy come with us. She can help, uh, advise you on décor and stuff, and she . . . could use the Shack credit card. She's the manager."

Wendy raised her eyebrows and smiled enigmatically.

"OK," Mabel said. "So a pig can eat a blind acorn. I'll give you credit, Dip, that's a good idea, for a change. Wendy, will you get in trouble?"

"Meh," Wendy said, "nothing I can't handle. The Shack has a promotion budget now—"

"Since when?" Mabel asked.

"Since Melody sorta became the unofficial bookkeeper. Anyways, Soos socks away a few thousand for things like radio ads and TV spots. Thanks to the 'Ghost Harassers' show bein' free, there's extra dough in there. I can charge up to, like, a two hundred and fifty dollar limit and nobody will worry about it."

"Make it so!" Mabel said, sounding for just an instant like Blind "Toot-toot" Ivan "McBumbersnazzle."

Teek had made out a list of party food, which Mabel critiqued: "No, no, no! Bean dip? Really? A cheese board? BOR-ring! C'mon, Teek, be imaginative! This is a Summerween bash we're talking. Theme it! Theme it!"

Teek thought it over. "How about a couple of big watermelons cut so they're bowls, and they hold melon balls? You can carve faces on them and call the melon balls "Jack O'Brains."

"Good, good, you're rolling," Mabel said.

"Umm . . . instead of the bean dip, how about some guacamole? We could call it something like Green Gloop."

Mabel pooched up her mouth and shook her head. "Not Summerweeny enough. How about Green Ghoul Guts?"

"I wouldn't eat something like that," Teek said in a decisive tone.

Wendy suggested, "Call it Hungry and Ghoulish. Y'know, like Hungarian goulash."

"You're on fire!" Mabel said, and she slapped a "Hot Babe" sticker on Wendy's shirt.

Dipper said, "Yeah, and you can serve it in old galoshes. So it'd be Hungry and Ghoulish Galosh."

Mabel stared at him for a long time in silence. "You're cute when you try to be creative," she said comfortingly. She handed him an "E for Effort" sticker.

"I'll take what I can get," Dipper said.

Thanks to Dipper's caution, Mabel at least agreed to run the plans by Soos and Melody. Soos was all for everything and even volunteered to let Melody take their son and daughter trick-or-treating on her own so he could DJ, but Mabel thanked him and gently turned him down.

"Summerween is such a_ family_ holiday," she said. "You need to be with your kids, and your kids need to be with you. I mean, we'd love to have you at the keyboard and all, but we'll have to give your family top priority."

"Wise words, Hambone," Soos said, accepting a "Ghoul Dad, Cool Dad" sticker from her.

That afternoon, Mabel parked Helen Wheels in the Summerween Store lot nearly as badly as Stan had once parked the Stanleymobile (part of the reason for the general Pines ban) and galloped into the store in blonde wig, heels that made her gallop more of a spastic stagger, and trailing a Dipper-like list as long as her arm—literally.

Wendy and Dipper—he had not bothered with the disguise, suspecting that as long as Stan wasn't there the store owners didn't care if he came in or not—followed her more sedately.

"You and Mabes got a costume idea?" Wendy asked.

"Not so far. Hey—if I can ask my fiancée for a special favor—would you mind joining us?"

She laughed. "In a _masquerade-a-trois_? Kinky! But, OK, sure, long as it's not something humiliating or too revealing. I mean—remember Questiony the Question Mark?"

"I think Mabel's probably over that exhibitionist phase," Dipper said. "But, I dunno. Three Stooges or something? Ghostbusters?"

"Mighty Powerful Rangers?"

"Good one!" he said as he opened the door for her.

"Sure, I'll go for something like that," Wendy said.

Mabel flashed past, pushing a shopping cart already overflowing with horror-movie paraphernalia.

"She works fast," Dipper said.

"Let's catch up to her. I gotta sign when we use the card, and I won't have as much fun if she racks up a bill for five thousand and I lose my job over this!"

They hurried after Mabel, not to stop her—no one had yet discovered the secret to that—but at least to control her.

Which was, admittedly, nearly as difficult.


	2. Chapter 2

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**2: Busy Monday**

Fantine—OK, not her actual given name, she was Francine Brightwell, but at fourteen she'd become a huge _Les Mis_ fan and had rechristened herself after the tragic woman in the musical—give her a break, all fourteen-year-olds are sort of drama queens—anyway, these days, Francine was the clerk in the Summerween Store for one month out of the year and a kindergarten teacher for nine of the other months, and she groaned when she saw Mabel hustling across the parking lot.

However, she didn't see either Stanley Pines or the Stanleymobile, and following Mabel were Teek, a nice young man, and Mabel's much more timid brother Dipper, together with Dan Corduroy's daughter. After a moment of hesitation, Fantine took her thumb off the call button for Security and inhaled deeply, telling herself, "Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean." And for about the tenth time that season, she told herself that if not for the fact that her gig in the Summerween Store paid for her annual vacation, she would just ditch it. Kindergarten pupils were annoying, true, but they weren't in the same league as customers at the Summerween Store.

Mabel came through the automatic door and stood glaring back toward the parking lot. "Move it!" she shouted, and Teek hurried in. "Grab a shopping cart!" She waved at Fantine. "It's OK! We're shopping for party decorations!"

"We've got them," Fantine said. "Only this time—please don't drive your car into the store!"

"No promises! This way, Teek!"

Mabel somehow managed to climb onto the front of the shopping cart and lean forward, like the figurehead of a sailing ship. Teek, visibly fighting gravity to keep the cart from tilting forward and dumping her, pushed and panted.

More sedately, Wendy and Dipper came in, and they headed to the counter. "Hey, Miz Brightwell," Wendy said.

"In here, I'm Fantine," she said. "Hi, Wendy. Dipper, can you control your sister?"

Dipper shrugged. "Hasn't worked so far, but I'll try. Where is she?"

"She just vanished down Aisle B."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Join you in a minute," Wendy said. "Listen, Fantine, you know I'm Manager of the Mystery Shack, right?"

Fantine nodded. "Yes, I've heard."

Wendy rolled her eyes and in a confidential low voice, she asked, "Retail, huh?"

"Don't get me started."

"Anyways," Wendy said, "Mabel's shopping for supplies for a Summerween party they're throwing at the Shack. I'm gonna put it on the Shack's credit card, but I want to limit it to no more than two hundred fifty, OK? Back me on that?"

"Sure, I'll—oh, here we go!" A ten-year-old kid ran screaming down Aisle B and hurtled out of the store. "Only could you please help Mabel collect her stuff and get her out of the store as quickly as possible?"

"Do my best."

* * *

On the first day of Summerween Mabel's shopping spree bought—

Twelve light-up ghosties,

Eleven skull-themed tablecloths,

Ten dozen matching paper plates,

Nine blacklight posters,

Eight hanging nylon bats,

Seven bloody vampires,

Six spools of fake cobweb,

Five arched black cats,

Four plastic skeletons,

Three witches stirring,

Two laughing skulls,

And a ten-foot-tall spiderwebbed tree.

* * *

Fortunately, the tree trunk came apart in sections, with branches and spiderwebs in a separate box, so they were barely able to bungee-cord it to the top of the car. The rest made up two carloads. It all came to two hundred and ninety-five dollars—Dipper grudgingly kicked in the forty-five bucks so the charge card wouldn't take too big a hit—and they drove the booty back to the Shack.

Some of it, the tablecloths and the paper plates and so on, they just took up to the attic and stored on the landing. Tripper helped by running upstairs behind them, sniffing everything they brought up, and growling at the life-sized plastic vampire figures.

The ghosts, battery-powered and about five feet tall each, they had to assemble, which they did on the landing. The rest of it was mostly in boxes, except for the awkward tree (once assembled, that would go out front, with a WELCOME sign hung on it), and they stored it all—on the attic landing.

"I can't even get to my room!" Dipper complained.

"It's only for the rest of the week, Dipper!" Mabel scolded. "Bunk in with Wendy until Saturday."

"Yeah, dude," Wendy said with a wicked grin. "Don't make a big deal out of it!"

But a determined Dipper managed to clear a narrow path to his bedroom door, with a short side branch to the bathroom door.

Not that he didn't pause first to seriously consider Mabel's alternate solution.

And just as he finished making his pathways, his agent called him. "Gotta take this," he said, vanishing into his room with his phone.

"Hey, Wendy. He doesn't have another girl on the side, does he?" Mabel asked.

"He better not," Wendy said good-naturedly.

"Mabel!" Teek said. He was sort of shy about such things. In fact, he'd turned pink when Mabel had suggested that Dipper sleep in Wendy's room and still hadn't regained his normal coloration. "Dipper wouldn't do that."

"It's always the quiet ones you gotta watch out for," Mabel said as a stack of boxed plastic skeletons—which would have to be assembled—toppled over. "Poop! These are just gonna have to go in Dip's room."

"Use the window seat for three of 'em," Wendy suggested.

"That'll work," Teek said, shooing Tripper off—he'd just found a primo sunbeam, too.

Dipper came back out. "Oh, man!"

"What is it, dude? Bad news?" Wendy asked.

"Not exactly. That was my agent. _Midschool Magazine_ wants to do an interview with me. Well, not with me, but with Stan Mason."

"What's the dealy-oh?" Mabel asked. "That's just your pseudonym! Is that right? Is it pseudopod?"

"Nym's right," Teek said.

"Thank you, Teek," Mabel said, grabbing him and planting a kiss on him. Then she surfaced. "So what's wrong? Is it a personal interview? Do you gotta fly to New York or some deal? 'Cause if you do, I'm totally your manager and I'm coming along! We'll put it on your publisher's expense account!"

"No, no, it's just a phone interview," Dipper said. They're gonna schedule it for the October issue and the TV studio's going to supply them with some illustrations—the cartoon show starts next spring. Bea says the publicity will be good for my books, so—I said I'd do it. They want it in the next two weeks. But they're also going to want photos."

"There goes your cover," Wendy said.

Dipper squirmed a little. "Yeah."

"No problem!" Mabel said. "Come on, we'll age you up—I can style your hair different, we'll use makeup to cover your birthmark, you can wear heavy black-rimmed glasses, you can—I know, you can have like a little beard—I can get one through the theatrical makeup company we used for _My Fair Lady_—and, here's the topper, I'll dress you up stylishly. Ta-da! You're magically transformed into Author Stan Mason! Nobody would think the guy in the photo could possibly be Dipper Pines!"

"Wait, what?" Dipper asked weakly.

Wendy seemed to catch Mabel's enthusiasm: "Yeah, and how about we take him to Dr. P's Institute and pose him like in the library, or maybe in one of the offices? Dr. P's office is real manly—have him leaning casually on the desk, bookshelves in the background—"

"He agrees!" Mabel said.

"I do?" Dipper asked.

Tripper barked as if telling Dipper to be a good boy.

"There, you said it, you can't back out now," Mabel crowed. "Let's do this next Sunday afternoon! Wendy, you pick out some authorly clothes for him. I'm thinking a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows—"

"That's old-fashioned," Teek said. "Make him look cool, not stuffy."

"Cool?" Mabel asked. "Um, this is my brother I gotta work with, you know."

"I'll think about it," Wendy said. "Suppose he could pull off a turtleneck?"

"I wish you wouldn't talk about me like I was a mannequin," Dipper said.

"We'll consult you," Mabel said. "But—that will have to come after the party!"

* * *

Monday was their day off, but Mabel's planning and shopping trip ate up a good deal of it. Just to get away from it all, Dipper asked Wendy if he could take her out to eat somewhere outside the Valley. They left the Shack early, in Dipper's Land Runner—he wasn't a great fan of driving, but it _was _his car, and he needed practice, because ever since the kids had got their drivers' licenses and their shared car, Helen Wheels, Mabel had hogged it, and now that he had his own set of wheels, he needed to catch up.

Anyway, they ranged fairly far afield, on Wendy's recommendation going north to the small town of Cougar Springs, which Dipper had never visited because it was three miles off the main route to the Dalles. However, small though it was, the town had a seafood restaurant that turned out to be rustic but served good food—native trout and Chinook salmon two of the specialties. Wendy assured Dipper that he'd like the salmon, so they went with that. After one bite, Dipper had to agree with Wendy—it was delicious. "How'd you even know about this little place?" he asked her.

"Usual way," she said with a grin. "One summer Dad had a logging job near here, and me and my brothers spent a week helping him. He found this spot and we ate here about every night. I'm glad it's still here—it's been about seven years since then. It's still just as good, too."

Comfortably full, they left the restaurant a few minutes before eight, and Dipper was set for a leisurely drive back to the Shack. However, as he got close to the highway, he saw a big neon sign ahead on the right: _NORTHERN LIGHTS DRIVE-IN. _"Is that a restaurant, too?" he asked.

Wendy laughed. "No, man, it's a drive-in movie!"

"Oh. I didn't know they even still existed."

"Not many do. Three or four in the whole state. Hey, want to go?"

"Uh—you want to?"

"Pull off! You never been to a drive-in, man?"

"Never," Dipper said.

"It's cool, you sit in the car and—what's playing? Hah, look, it's a horror movie!"

"_Chop Chop?" _Dipper asked dubiously. "Sounds like a teen-slasher type thing."

"Let's see it!"

"Well . . . OK."

Dipper wasn't quite sure of the protocol, but he drove to the ticket booth, shelled out twelve bucks—Monday nights were bargain nights, it turned out—and then drove slowly in to the parking area. "How does this work?"

"I think this one, you park in a good slot—huh, about half full already—and then you hang a speaker on the window—some of them just broadcast to the car radio, but here they got speakers—look, there's a good place toward the center, third row back—yeah, that one—OK, careful, don't hit the pole, pull in and I'll grab the speaker."

Dipper nosed the car up a small ramp-like ridge, Wendy rolled down her window and said, "Perfect!" She retrieved the boxy speaker and rolled the window halfway up so she could hang it on the glass. "Cool, these are wireless. This one time Thompson was in the drive-in over in La Grande and forgot to take the wired speaker off when the movie was over, and like, pulled down the post, cracked the window in his mom's van, and shorted out the electricity in the whole place. His mom had to pay a couple hundred to get it fixed, and he got grounded for a month!"

"It's still light," Dipper pointed out.

"Yeah, won't be dark enough for the movie for another fifty minutes or so."

"What do we do until it starts?"

"Well, first we should've come in the Green Machine, 'cause it has a bench seat. But in your car, let's just go sit in the back, OK?"

"Can we see the screen from back there?"

"Dude," Wendy said with a broad grin, "that's not hardly the point."

"Oh," said Dipper.

He and Wendy scrambled into the back seat and sat close together. Very close.

That evening he learned another pleasant lesson about being a teen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**3: Bossy Mabel**

Tuesday. Normally Dipper woke at six—anyway, his bedside clock was set for six, but he'd developed some inexplicable inner alarm that generally woke him at five forty-five, five-fifty, around in there. But the night before, he and Wendy had returned home at nearly one A.M.

Wendy had driven back from the drive-in because she was more alert. The two had kissed goodnight for another few minutes, and then had turned in, having arranged with each other not to run the next morning.

They generally took two days off a week from the running routine—they rotated them, Tuesday and Saturday this week, Wednesday and Sunday next week, and so on. In fact, they were scheduled for an off day on Wednesday, but, heck, after a late night they didn't mind rearranging the order. So sleep in Tuesday, wake up to run on Wednesday.

As to the drive-in, Dipper couldn't understand now why so few of them were left. It was a great way to see a movie. True, he couldn't remember anything from _Chop Chop_ except the music had way too many strings and at one point Wendy briefly surfaced to offer a critique: "That dude never wielded an axe in his life!" Then the two got back to an extremely intense mental make-out session.

—_What if somebody looks in the window and sees us? _Dipper mentally asked Wendy when they were both in the gasping and clinging stage.

_No sweat, Dip! They'd see two teens hugging and kissing while fully clothed. Big fat deal. _She snickered—Dipper still found it a curiously exciting sensation to have a girl laugh into his mouth—and added, _Take a look at that van parked straight ahead of us. If anybody comes knocking, they'll pick that vehicle, 'cause man, it's rocking!_

It was true—the Siddowna (an Italian minivan) up ahead was parked, but still giving its shocks a workout. Whoever was inside it, they were, um, active!

Anyway, they had snuggled and cuddled all the way through the horror flick, then hung around for the cartoon cavalcade (some of the cars left, but a good many hung around, and maybe they had kids in them, who knows). These were really old cartoons, Bugs and Popeye and Red Hot Riding Hood and the two magpies and the friendly ghost. Dipper hadn't seen half of the characters before, not that he actually saw any of them that night, either. He was far too busy looking into Wendy's eyes.

And after the cartoons there had been a fireworks show, not a huge one, but they stayed to watch and in the end Dipper's car was about the last one out of the lot. "You sleepy?" Wendy asked as they replaced the speaker.

"Yeah, to tell the truth."

"Mm, I thought I picked up on some dream imagery there toward the end. Us playing baseball?"

"Keeps me going," he admitted.

"Mind if I drive your car, man?"

He handed her the keys.

She took them with a chuckle. "You didn't add the caution, Dip. It's practically obligatory."

"You know what?" he asked, getting into the passenger seat. "The way I feel right now, I'm not gonna worry about any pedestrians. I'll talk to you to keep you alert."

"Good deal."

So as they started out, Dipper asked, "What was your favorite part?"

"Mm," she said making the turn back onto the dark highway, "I think it was when I stuck my tongue in your ear."

* * *

In fact, as he lay in bed—having shut off the beeping alarm—Dipper dreamily went over a few of his own favorite parts. It was truly astounding how he and Wendy could, um, stimulate each other just by casual touch—kissing, holding hands—not bothering with zippers or buttons. He had a feeling that when the real thing came along, it was going to be fantas—

The door slammed open, and Mabel yelled, "Out of bed, slacker! Now! There's work to be done!"

"Mabel?" he asked, confused. "You never get up this—"

"We have to do our decorating before and after business hours!" she said. "Friday's going to be here so fast it'll make your head spin! Get UP, get DRESSED, and get GOING! You got ten minutes to have breakfast, and then today we're hanging streamers!"

Sailors advised green crew members never to pee into the wind. Battered criminals told young hoodlums not to tug on Superman's cape. Outlaws who tried to peek under the Lone Ranger's mask invariably regretted it. And when Mabel was in a mood, a wise brother never messed around with her.

"Got you, too?" Wendy asked as he came to the table. She poured him a cup of coffee and shoved a bowl and some Rice Pop-Pops to him. "Better hurry, man, she means business!"

And he had no sooner rinsed and dried his and Wendy's cups and bowls before Teek showed up. They helped Mabel in the shop—she had set up the tall stepladder—and Teek climbed it while Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper unreeled purple, black, and orange crepe-paper streamers, tied off the ends with twine, anchored them to walls and shelves, and artistically twirled them before handing the free end up to Teek to hang from a ceiling hook.

"You're doing it wrong!" Mabel had snapped at Dipper on his first try, an orange one. "Look, hook it to the thumbtack in the wall, see? Now as you unroll it, twist it to the left, not to the right, and keep track. From here to Teek there should be twenty-one rotations in the spool, not twenty and not twenty-two, got it? Keep count!"

She had it all calculated. _She can do this in her head,_ Dipper thought, _but she needed help with math all through high school!_

They weren't slacking, but all that unreeling, tying off, hanging, and twisting did not go fast. By the time the ideal number of streamers—twenty-four, by Mabel's determination—were swagged up to the center, giving the gift shop something of the appearance of the interior of a circus tent, if zombies ran the circus, it was well past seven A.M. Alas, the weary were not yet permitted to rest.

The bats had to be hung, not all at one level, but on different lengths of monofilament fishing line. Wendy was still, by an admittedly smaller margin, the tallest with the longest arms, so she pushed the stepladder around, installed small cup hooks in the beams and rafters, and hung the bats one at a time as Dipper passed them up. Meanwhile, Teek and Mabel were out front assembling the fake tree—Wendy said it looked as though it were meant to be a manchineel.

"Really?" Dipper asked, nearly dropping the bat to which he was tying a length of fishing line.

"Yeah, I think, a dead one. _Hippomane mancinella, _if I'm remembering the taxonomy right. It's supposed to have poisonous fruit."

"More than that," Dipper said. "In central America and the Caribbean, they call it the tree of death! Every part of it's toxic—the sap will blister flesh, the fruit will cause internal hemorrhaging, if you burn the wood in a campfire the smoke can permanently blind you or cause your air passages to swell shut and asphyxiate you—"

"This one's plastic, though," Wendy said reassuringly, stretching way up to hang the last bat high. "Dude—are you looking up my shirt to see my bra?"

"No."

"Why the heck not?" She hopped down from the ladder and kissed him. "Don't worry, Dip, this is not a tree of death your sister's working with out there. It's a plastic model—big one, granted, but just a plastic imitation of a twisty-limbed tree. Let's see how they're doing. I gotta take my shower and get in uniform pretty soon now."

The prop tree had been manufactured somewhere in Asia, where simple instructions for assembling it had been composed in a language capable of deep shades of complex meaning, then run through a computer translation program, then handed over to someone who once had been in a room with someone else who had a nodding acquaintance with English. The results were less than enlightening:

Start by gently pulling all the items in a box and put them on the shelf compared with the detailed illustration of the finished wood. Make sure you know where!

It is important to start with a six (6) pieces consisting of the trunk: the root base (2), the middle barrel (2) and the upper part of the industry (2). Each part is broken together. Make sure the fit is tight. Press hard until you hear an extravagant sound "click".

From there it became surreal, but finally Mabel and Teek had found the two components of each third of the trunk and had pressed them all together until there was a loud, if not extravagant, click. Since there were thirty-six twisty branches to click into the top—and since it was past eight, and the Shack opened at nine—they just hauled the trunk (not very heavy) around back and set it up, stacking the branches on the porch for later assembly.

Tripper, who had been watching with interest, stepped up when they had the trunk upright and steady and saluted it. Well, with a hind leg.

"Tripper approves!" Mabel announced happily.

Teek said, "Yeah, well, I'll rinse it with the hose before we start fooling with it again."

"What's this stuff?" Dipper asked, holding up a plastic bag crammed with what looked like unflavored cotton candy.

"Spiderweb stuff," Mabel said. "Once the branches are in, we'll string this across them. OK, people, good start, one and a half items off my checklist. We start again at six-thirty sharp!"

"We won't have time to eat dinner!" Dipper protested.

"Teek will do sandwiches for us! Some things are more important than food, Broseph!"

"Dude," Wendy said to Dipper in a mock whisper, "are you sure your Grunkle Ford got rid of the Shapeshifter? I'd swear that's not the real Mabel!"

* * *

The majority of the tourists were not from anywhere near Gravity Falls and had never heard of Summerween, but they remarked on the scanty decorations that were already up. Dipper explained over and over that the people of Gravity Falls liked Halloween so much that they celebrated it twice a year.

It was a busy sales day, but when Dipper got a chance to speak to Wendy, he said, "I'm gonna write up a little trifold pamphlet explaining what Summerween is. Do we have anything in the budget for taking it to the copier store to have it printed and folded?"

"I think they charge like twelve bucks for a thousand, using cheap paper," Wendy said. "Maybe double that for glossy. Yeah, we can handle that."

"Let's go for it," he said.

That afternoon he got a tiny taste of fame and a shock when a teen-aged boy said, "This is the place on the new 'Ghost Harassers' net show, right?"

"Right," Dipper said. "My uncles own the Mystery Shack. You saw Stanley in the show—the guy with the fez. He's not here today, though—"

"Yeah, you were in the show too!" the kid said excitedly. "I remember your face. And you had a sister?"

"Mabel," Dipper said. "That's her over there on the snack-bar register."

"Oh, man, and there was this gorgeous redhead!"

"Wendy," Dipper said.

Wendy overheard him—she had just led a group through the Museum—and said, "You rang?"

"He saw the 'Ghost Harassers' episode," Dipper said.

"Hi!" Just from the sound of the one word, Dipper realized that the kid was smitten, and why not? "I really liked you—the show, I mean! Uh—is that ghost in the closet deal for real?"

"There's something there," Wendy said. "We're not ready to say absolutely it's a ghost, but it's something paranormal."

"Can I see it?"

"Sorry, man. Our experts have to make sure it's safe for people to look in there first. If they can clear it, then we'll let people take a peek, but right now, it's off-limits to the public. Check back with us in a month."

"Aw—I live in Colorado," the kid said, disappointed. "Could I at least go see the closet if it's closed? Will you take me?"

"Um, she's engaged," Dipper said gently.

"Yeah, and what are you, fifteen?"

"Fourteen," the kid admitted.

"Sorry, man, even if I wasn't already engaged to a hunk, I'd be too old for you. But come over here, and I'll show you the closet door. It has to stay locked, though, for safety."

What she showed him wasn't the upstairs closet, where the Invisible Wizard, or the fungus from Yuggoth, or whatever it was, ordinarily hung out, but the plain old broom closet, which Stan had plans to label as the Ghost Closet—he just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

However, the kid took a photo of the broom-closet door, apparently satisfied, then came back and bought a couple of booklets—_Ghost Legends of Oregon _and _Haunts of the Pacific Northwest—_and asked for Wendy's, Mabel's (he hit on her, too, lightly), and Dipper's autographs.

Dipper signed cheerfully, though he barely stopped himself from signing "Stan Mason."

Lots of tourists, heavy sales day. At six he was tired, but by six-thirty, with a hamburger inside him, he was helping Teek and Mabel fit the branches into the Tree of Death, irritating because every socket was unique and only one of the branches would plug into it. Since none were labeled, it was like an incredibly dull jigsaw puzzle in three dimensions.

It took them two hours, and Wendy was away for that time. She always went over to the Corduroy house at least twice a week to visit and make sure things were not falling apart. She usually came back mildly cranky because her brother Junior had moved into her old room, and he was the worst slob in the family. "Not like I claim the room any longer," she told Dipper, "but, man, I hate to see it in such a mess!"

Dipper told her of his woes with the tree. "We finally got it put together," he said. "But I'm not sure that about four of the limbs won't fall off. I mean, they're in the only sockets they could possibly fit in, but they're kinda loose. Maybe we'll glue them. Tomorrow Mabel's gonna put the spiderwebs in and then we have to assemble the skeletons and vampires."

Wendy rubbed the back of his neck. "Look on the bright side, Dipper. Once the party's over, there's the big crazy week before Independence Day, and then things slack off. The worst of the summer's just ahead of us and then it's smoother sailing."

Well, as things turned out—she was partly right.


	4. Chapter 4

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**4: Ingenie-ous**

On Wednesday, Mabel, Teek, Wendy, and Dipper finally got everything moved off the attic landing. As soon as they did, Mabel announced, "OK, this is gonna be the séance and Ouija Board room!"

"Nobody will go for that," Dipper objected.

"Sure they will!" Mabel said. "Because you're gonna be the guru."

"Seriously, everybody knows that stuff is—wait, what?"

"You're gonna be the guru—of love!" Mabel said. "We'll get couples up here, they'll do the predictiony stuff with you, and you'll say stuff like 'If you give him three kisses, something wonderful will happen,' or 'I see that you two are fated to travel to the bonfire to hear amazing stories.' Get one of those plastic crystal balls and I'll make you a turban—"

"Not interested," Dipper said. "I'm no good on stage! I get too self-conscious! Find somebody—"

"Gideon!" Wendy said.

Mabel snapped her fingers. "Sold!" Gideon still had a gig at the Shack whenever they had heavy traffic—as they were beginning to have at that point—as a salesman/cashier. Gideon was no longer chubby-attractive but (as even the picky Pacifica grudgingly admitted) had become kinda hunky now that he was fifteen, taller, slimmer, and sort of buffed up—he'd started lifting weights in prison, and Ghost Eyes, who still lived in town but worked for a company in Hirschville, coached him.

And he still was a charmer with a great line of patter, and he had worked as a fake psychic. "Better him than me," Dipper said, willingly giving up the role.

But then of course the landing had to be decorated. "Here, six-thirty, stat!" Mabel ordered.

"At least give us time to have dinner with Soos and the family," Dipper groaned. "Soos says we're gonna be super busy today—six buses coming through for sure—and we need a little wind-down time.

Mabel appeared to be in the throes of an inner battle, but finally she relented. "Seven-thirty, then!" she said. "When I can grab a few minutes here and there today, I'll dream up a motif. I know we'll want a card table, three chairs—make it five, there may be two couples coming up at once sometimes—and stuff to set the mood—I think we still got that fake skull in the storage room, and you know, some wine bottles with drippy candles—how are you at candle dripping?"

"Don't know, never tried," Wendy said. "But how hard could it be?"

"Maybe Dip can rig some kind of light so the crystal ball can sort of light up when Gideon steps on a button under the table or something—Tarot cards! We got decks of them! I'll commandeer one. It's for the good of the party!"

"Does Gideon even know how to read Tarot cards?" Teek asked.

"Doesn't matter!" Mabel said. "He's a wiz at just making crap up as he goes—you know, 'Oh, lookie here! Y'all drew the Fourteen of Nightmares! That means you're goin' on a dream trip with somebody real special!' He'll be great."

"If he'll even do it," Dipper said. "He'll probably prefer dancing with Ulva."

"Mm, not if I know Gideon," Wendy said. "Anytime he can be in the spotlight—"

She had a point. Mabel had Soos call Gideon and ask if he could come in for a day of work, and Gideon agreed right off the bat. He showed up just before opening time, and Mabel went to work on him: "Hey, how'd you like to earn an extra fifty bucks this weekend? Plus if you get tips, you keep 'em all?"

"Well," Gideon said, "I don't know. What do you have in mind?"

And Mabel laid it on: "You'll be Gideon the Master Mystic! For maybe one and a half hours during the party, you'll be up on the landing telling fortunes. People can go up there for no more than ten minutes at a time, and we'll time it so there's a good rotation. You read their fortunes and tell them something they'd like to hear, and we'll put a tip jar there and bait it with a few singles and fives. The rest of the time, you're free to dance with Ulva!"

"Fifty dollars is mighty tempting," Gideon admitted. "Do I get to wear a costume?"

"Design your own!" Mabel said.

"Hmm. None of the ones I wore in the Tent of Telepathy fit me any longer, but I got accessories—capes and what-not. I believe I can whip somethin' up. Yeah, it's a deal!"

Though Gideon's presence at the Shack was invaluable that day—along with the buses, hordes of tourists in vans and cars streamed through—Mabel kept finding lulls to duck out and tinker with her plans for the set, as she called it.

At six, when the last tourist had left with a bag full of merch, Wendy sat next to Dipper at the counter and put her feet up. "Sometimes I wish I was back behind the register," she said. "Wouldn't have to catch shoplifters, or crack down on kids racing' around and wrecking the place, or answer questions from people about whether this or that is really real. And I'd be off my feet!"

"Come up to the attic," Dipper said. "I'll give you a massage."

"How can I say no to that?" Wendy asked.

They stopped to learn that Abuelita would have dinner on the table right around six-thirty—the Ramirez kids got hungry early—and then climbed up to Dipper's bedroom. Mabel had had Teek haul up a card table, unfold it, and set it up close to the bay window, so the stained glass that looked something like Bill Cipher would be Gideon's backdrop.

Now she was tacking a purple velvet cloth around the table. "Hey, Dip!" she said. "We picked out a clear plastic globe—"

"Resin," Dipper said.

"Huh?"

"The fake crystal ball. It's acrylic resin, not plastic."

"Whatever! Look, we got this base, see?"

Dipper examined it. It was ceramic, painted black, hollow, and shaped like a pyramid with the top lopped off. "Yeah, OK."

"So can you rig up a light that will make the acryllicky thing glow?"

"Shouldn't be hard," Dipper said. "An LED bulb—you want it white or in some color?"

"Ooh, spooky blue!" Mabel said.

"OK, spooky blue LED, a socket, a couple of wires, some tape, a battery pack and a push-button—maybe five dollars at the electronics store. We can tape the wires down to the table top, cover the table with some material—got any more of this velvet stuff?"

"It's not real velvet, but yeah, got plenty."

"OK, then cut enough to cover the top of the table, and snip a little hole, quarter of an inch, in the middle. We'll feed the wire up through that, through the crystal ball base, and then when Gideon steps on the button, the crystal will light up. Good enough?"

"Thanks, Brobro! Oh, you think Soos will mind my taking these?" She rattled something in a cardboard box.

Dipper looked. Six stoppered bronze bottles—yes, bronze, not glass—larger than a .750-liter wine bottle but smaller than a 1.5-liter magnum—rattled around. "Where were they?" Dipper asked.

"Storage room, top shelf way in the back."

"Uh—the shelves marked DO NOT TOUCH?" Dipper asked.

"Uh-huh."

"I think all the stuff on those belongs to Ford," Dipper said. "Ask him."

"Meh, I'll ask after the party," Mabel said.

"I'd do it before."

"That's why I'm me and you're you, Broboat! Come on, if we get a little wax on 'em, it's not gonna hurt! We can heat 'em up and melt it off! They're stainless steel!"

"Bronze, I think," Dipper said.

"OK, stainless bronze! You go do whatever Wendy's looking anxious about, and leave the decorating to the pro!"

"OK," Dipper said.

A couple of minutes later, as Wendy sighed happily, Mabel yelled, "You left the door open, you exhibitionists!"

"I'm just giving Wendy a foot rub!" Dipper yelled back before thinking.

"Next!" Mabel yelled happily.

* * *

Funny thing about those bronze bottles.

Now, most of the stuff for sale in the Shack was, quite honestly, fake. A lot of it was substandard fakery, too—the Jackalope (in the Museum, not for sale, but the principle's the same) was about the most amateurish example of taxidermy extant in the Western world. Even averagely bright two-year-olds would regard the Jackalope critically, remove the pacifiers from their mouths, and murmur, "Dat's not weal."

However, a few things, mostly those left over from the days when a young Stanford Pines was an avid collector of allegedly paranormal paraphernalia, were genuine, or at least had a provenance. One was a yellow crystal ball (now safely stored away) that opened a passageway to a bizarre pocket universe where figures analogous to those in fairy tales not only existed, but squabbled and plotted and occasionally interacted with people from our own world.

That had once surprised Teek and Mabel, and since then, Ford had stored it securely. It was in a shoebox under his and Lorena's bed. The bronze bottles, now—

In 1918, in the last weeks of World War I, the British had built a small airfield near Palmyra, Syria.

No, hang on, this is important.

A Lieutenant of Royal Engineers, young Smedley Guyleford-fforthington (pronounced the way it's spelled—"Gillyforthin") had his men moving some rubble, and one of them said, "'Ere, there's summat under this one."

The Lieutenant investigated and discovered a cavity—not very large, only about half a meter deep and less than a meter square—that might or might not have been a stone shelf in some building in ancient Palmyra. Or it could have been a niche in a tomb, even. He was no archaeologist.

Anyway, the opening contained only half a dozen bronze bottles. You're thinking wine bottles, but don't. These had bulbous bodies and moderately long necks ending in a flared mouth. They looked very old—bronze ages well, but these all bore a patina of antiquity. The Lieutenant claimed them and kept them and took them home with him as spoils of war and nobody caught him.

In 1926, the Lieutenant moved to the United States, settling in Boston, which the British think of as moderately civilized. He had accumulated a lot of memorabilia, being something of a pack rat. He sold a great deal of it at auction for pretty good prices, but nobody seemed to want a half-dozen bronze bottles, still sealed. One appraiser ventured the guess that they were funerary urns, and that the contents were the ashes of human beings.

That gave Guyleford-fforthington pause. He hesitated to clean the things, because one never knew, they might be museum pieces and cleaning them would ruin the value. They were eyesores, so he didn't use them as decoration. Then, too, if they contained the ashes of dead chaps, he really didn't care for their company, not that he was superstitious.

Finally, in 1938, he moved from New York to Ontario and solved the problem by simply leaving the bottles in his old apartment.

The next occupant, as it happened, was an amateur archaeologist, specializing in Native American materials. He was also a little bit of a crank. Well, a big bit of a crank. He had a theory that Native Americans were actually descended from a group of British, French, and Middle Eastern refugees from the Crusades.

He glommed onto the bottles, which clearly were of Greek origin—in fact, they were manufactured in Byzantium ca. 400 BC—and imagined they'd been found somewhere out West and were proof of his pet theory.

In 1939, the amateur archaeologist left the east and headed for the West Coast, where he settled near Eugene. No one knows why, but he had decided that the six bronze bottles had been discovered somewhere near there. He spent his last years trying to find the location, which he never did, since it never existed in the first place.

Anyway, he died intestate and fairly broke in 1951. His landlady sold off his effects to settle his outstanding rent bill.

The six bronze bottles wound up at a curio store in Portland.

When Stanford Pines moved to Oregon in the 1970s, he happened to drive past the shop, noticed it, and jammed on the brakes. This was the kind of store he loved to poke around in.

He found nothing of value, but the six bronze bottles were still there, priced at one buck each. He bought the set, brought them to Gravity Falls, and eventually when Boyish Dan Corduroy built his cabin in the woods, he stored them there, meaning to investigate them one day, only he never got around to it.

He also never opened them.

Five of the six were empty. They had once contained ceremonial wine, but during an ancient war, they had been left unwashed, though stoppered, and anything in them now would not resemble wine. The sixth was the only one labeled, though the label had been overlooked for centuries. It was worn, had been very faint to begin with, and had been scratched on the bottom.

Really, now.

That's like inscribing on the bottom of a cup DO NOT TURN UPSIDE DOWN. By the time anyone reads it, it's too late.

Anyhow, some time probably in the first century BC, somebody with perhaps a diamond or a steel implement had scratched some words in koine, the Common Greek that was the _lingua franca_ of the Middle East at the time, a warning. The last word was not Greek, but in a pre-Arabic language.

The inscription said, more or less CONTAINS T'JN.

Probably even a linguist would have trouble with that.

But perhaps a bright one might say, "Ah-ha!"

It's a bottle to hold a Djinn.

Or, as the Romans would say, a genie.

It just waited for the bottle to be unstoppered.

In other words, it waited for Mabel.


	5. Chapter 5

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**5: Pop!**

Thursday, and the Shack was pretty much in readiness. Teek, Wendy, Dipper, and Mabel had spent a couple of hours putting up posters all over town inviting teens to the costume party and dance—and Grunkle Stan had topped Mabel by plastering bigger and more colorful posters up next to hers, inviting adults to the "Sixteen Again!" sock hop at the Teen Center.

"So how's that going?" Dipper asked as Stan put up a poster right above Mabel's on the gift-shop door.

"It's going great!" Stan said. "Half the tickets sold already! I'm guaranteed a profit even without my cut from the refreshments and concessions!"

"But—you'll have to hire a DJ, right?" Wendy asked.

Stan's grin widened. "Got that covered, too! Crazy Jake Tacoma's coming out of retirement—"

"Who?" Wendy and Dipper asked in unison. They'd just come in from their morning run and stood in their shorts and tee shirts, the morning air cool on their legs.

"Crazy Jake!" Stan said. "What, never heard of him? He's like a big-box store manager over in The Dalles, but when he was real young, he was a DJ outa Tacoma. He's famous in the Northwest! He retired from radio right about 2009, but I talked him into not only coming, but bringing his collection of tunes from the 1950s on up!"

"Not . . . sure anybody who was a kid in the 1950s would be in any shape to dance," Dipper said.

"Shows what you know, you Doubting Thompson!" Stan said. "But we're not gonna raid the assisted-living homes. Most of the ticket buyers so far have been in their forties and fifties, but Jake's got them covered, too. He never stopped collecting records. Some of the stuff's on CD's, but most of it's vinyl. How's Mabel makin' out with her party?"

"We're about ready," Wendy said. "You see the decorations."

"Yeah, that crazy tree with the fake cobwebs is real spooky," Stan said. "That was sarcasm, by the way."

"It'll look scarier at night, with a purple light on it," Dipper said. "The only thing I'm kind of worried about is having the place full of fifteen and sixteen-year-olds. I told Mabel we needed a couple of chaperons, at least."

"Bet she turned that down like a blanket on a bed!"

"Not hardly," Wendy said. "She named Dip and me chaperons!"

"Oh, _that's _gonna work out well!" Stan exclaimed. "By the way, that was—"

"Yeah, yeah," Dipper muttered. "I _said_ I was worried."

* * *

July 4th was coming fast, and the Shack traffic showed it. Gideon was back—he'd probably help out at the register for most of the rest of the summer—and Ulva came with him. She didn't work for money—though Soos would gladly have paid her—but just for enjoyment. Wendy loved having her in the Shack because bright-eyed Ulva constantly paced the gift shop, quick to put misplaced items back where they belonged and to straighten up displays.

Mabel helped Teek set up in the snack bar—he made delicious burgers, and his food was one reason the Shack's reputation had not only spread but had also picked up. When Dipper and Mabel had first come to Gravity Falls five years earlier, if any newspaper mentioned the Mystery Shack at all, you could just about bet on the word "tacky" appearing close to it.

But when Soos became the manager in August 2012, that began to change. Soos and Stan had wildly different management styles. Stan was a hard-driving boss, demanding hard work and grudging with a penny. During her short (three-day) stint as boss, Mabel had first been too lenient—Wendy confessed to Dipper once that she felt a lingering guilt over taking advantage of Mabel's good nature by goofing off with her friends instead of doing real work—and then when everything in the Shack had pretty much gone to hell, Mabel had become an even harder boss to work for than Stan had been.

But Soos—he was efficient, he was fully engaged, and most of all, he saw tourists as people who, like him, wanted to view the Shack as a fun place. And it worked. Stan reveled in fooling people with fake exhibits. Soos believed. Oh, he knew the Fiji mermaid was just a fish's butt sewed to a monkey's chest and head, but to him it was just a symbol for mermaids, and they were real, dawg, 'cause Mabel, like, kissed one, and people still claimed there were merfolk even in the lake!

Soos viewed the Shack through glasses with lenses made of wonder, and while Stan's obvious con-man demeanor amused tourists, Soos's childlike enthusiasm swept them up. Within a year, "tacky" had started to disappear from news items about the Shack, with "fun" and "charming" and the like taking its place. Since the "Ghost Harassers" program hit Webflix, more and more people were dropping in.

Unlike Stan, Soos charged tourists nothing at all to take photos. He even reminded them, "Dudes, share these online and if you have fun, tell everybody about us, OK?"

And people did. Nothing drives business like word of mouth, unless it's word of social media.

The tourists proved it that Thursday. The Shack had never had AC in Stan's day, but Soos—handyman extraordinaire—had added it when his and Melody's first baby was on the way. It worked hard to keep up with the body heat. Even with two registers open, Gideon and Dipper got a little frazzled and sweaty with the pace. Stan, after his stint of putting up posters for the Sixteen Again dance all over town, buzzed through again that afternoon.

Though he and Ford derived no income from the Shack—if one excluded the buck a year that Soos paid them in rent, and which they conscientiously divided fifty-fifty (literally, fifty cents each), old habits are hard to forget, and Stan's eyes all but glowed as he heard the music of the cash registers registering cash. He even offered to take over from Wendy on the Museum walk-throughs, and she gladly took him up on the offer. "I'll be in the staff room, soaking my feet," she told him.

At two o'clock, when the snack bar closed, Dipper told Gideon, "The rush is over now."

And then three tour buses, two unscheduled, came into the lot, one right after the other.

Retail. What are you gonna do?

* * *

A few tourists lingered to and then beyond closing time. Soos wouldn't chase anyone out, so finally at twenty past six the last family shuffled happily out of the gift shop, Dipper ran over and closed and barred the door, and Gideon hopped off his stool and arched his back. "Whoo-Lordy! That was a time and a half!"

The registers, upgraded this season, were linked electronically, so getting the day's total sales was just a matter of pushing a few buttons. Stan loomed behind Dipper and said, "Yeah, baby! Soos, you set a new record!"

Soos gave him a weary smile. "I don't know what we're gonna do after Dipper and Mabel and Wendy have to leave for college this fall. We're gonna miss you guys!"

"But your aim is gettin' better!" Stan said automatically. "Whoa, where did that come from? You guys know what I mean, anyway."

"Nobody leave!" Mabel yelled. "Tonight's our last chance for major planning and set-up for the party!"

They all groaned.

Mabel took Ulva's hand. "Listen, Ulva, we especially want you and Gideon to come to the party tomorrow night. Wear a costume."

"I could just turn," Ulva said.

"Um, sure, sure," Mabel said. Ulva was a werewolf—descended from true lycanthropes—and she could form even without a full moon. "But," Mabel went on, "kind of the whole point of a costume is to look like something you're not. But anyhow—tomorrow after the Shack closes, we're gonna have one hour to clear out the gift shop so we can use it for party games. This is where I need you. I want you to walk around and make sure you know where everything goes. Memorize it."

"Easy to do," Ulva said.

"And then on Sunday afternoon, when we're all rested, I want you to come back with Gideon, and we'll set up the gift shop just the same as it was before we stored stuff. OK?"

Ulva smiled. "I like this game!"

"I'll pay you for it, daw—dawlin'," Soos said. "Hah! Saved that one!" He had learned that werewolves prefer not to be called "dawg."

He and Gideon discussed terms, and then Gideon and his girlfriend left the Shack, holding hands. "They're such a cute couple!" Mabel said.

As they waited for Teek and Abuelita—tag-team cooking—to finish preparing dinner, Mabel obsessively checked the weather forecast for Friday afternoon and night. It had not changed: Hot, with highs in the low 90s and lows in the high 60s. Partly cloudy in the morning, clearing by noon, clear sky by sunset. Chance of rain less than ten per cent.

"Dipper!" Mabel said. "I want you and Wendy to go out to the bonfire clearing and make sure there's enough wood for a good campfire. Do it while there's still light."

"But we haven't eaten yet—" Dipper began.

"Do it!" Mabel insisted in that Boss Mabel voice.

Wendy grinned. "Come on, dude. I'm pretty sure all we have to do is inspect."

So they walked out past the Bottomless Pit and to the clearing. Wendy had earlier in the summer stacked up a good supply of firewood. "It's fine," Dipper said.

"Yeah, but tomorrow morning instead of running, you and I will come out here with some rakes and make sure there's no inflammable debris around the fire pit. I used 'inflammable' right, didn't I?"

Dipper laughed. "Yes, but most people say 'flammable.' 'Inflammable' is the right word—it means something that can burn, or be inflamed. But people thought that the 'in' part meant 'not,' and—what are you laughing at?"

"Just admiring my sweet, dorky guy!" Wendy said. "Now that I look, I think I'll borrow Soos's yard tractor and haul out about two or three hundred pounds of pea gravel."

Dipper moaned.

"Oh, come on," Wendy said. "It's not that much work. And I'll bring the long-handled loppers, too. 'Sbeen kind of dry lately, and I'd hate for the kids telling ghost stories to set fire to the forest!"

Dipper glanced up. Some of the pine boughs had grown heavy and drooped low. "I can see that," he said. "So when do we get up?"

"Six o'clock," Wendy said. "We can finish everything up in two hours, then have an hour left for showering and having breakfast."

"And then another murderous day in the gift shop," Dipper said. "I think that you, me, and Teek will be too tired to enjoy the party."

"You'll think better of it once the music starts," Wendy said. She started humming "I Choose You" and reached for him.

So, yeah, they did a slow dance together, sort of a freeform dance, but with their touch-telepathy, they were in perfect sync, humming together.

Dipper thought —_Oh, yeah, if you're my partner, I think I'll still be able to dance!_

_Then it's a date. Hey, Dipper—let's try something new. Dip me!_

She was an armful, but he managed it, and then they both started giggling, and she wriggled free but had her arms around his neck and pulled him down and for a few minutes, anyway, they forgot about checkout lines, tourists, and Mabel's orders.

* * *

Up in the attic, Mabel surveyed Gideon's lair—with purple lights casting an eerie glow—there would be some black light special effects, too, once it was dark outside—everything looked good. She sat at the card table and put her toe on the push button. The fake crystal ball on the table glowed a subtle blue. "Nice," she said.

What else, what else—oh, yes, the candles! She'd nearly forgotten. So—drag out the two three-flower-pot plant stands, which Melody had used on the balcony of her apartment in Portland when she lived there but had just stored away in the Shack. Lug them upstairs. One to the left of Gideon's seat, one to the right. Now, where were those bronze bottles?

She found them too and discovered that they were tightly corked, and that the corks had evidently fossilized. But she needed to get candles into the necks, so she got a corkscrew and forced it into the hard-as-wood corks. Then it took some hard tugging, and the corks all fragmented instead of coming out whole, but one by one she got them out.

When she had three out, she took a thin knife and scraped out the remnants of cork. Luckily, the bottle necks were exactly the right size for the fifteen-inch tall taper candles she had bought. She sort of screwed the bases into the bottle necks and then stood them up on the left-hand planter. "Good, good," she said. "Once I get all of these nice and dribbly looking, it'll be incredible!"

She started on the fourth bottle and found that the cork in that one was not all desiccated and hard. In fact, it popped out almost as if champagne was going to shoot out after it. None did, though.

She set that one on the second plant stand. And just then, from down the stair, Wendy yelled, "Hey, Mabes! Dinner's ready!"

"Coming!" Mabel said. She told the two remaining bottles, "I'll finish with you guys later."

And she went bounding down the stairs to the Thursday night meal Abuelita and Teek had prepared: frijoles, chicken tinga, guacamole, and pico de gallo. She caught the aroma halfway down the stairs and leaped the rest of the way.

She cheerfully announced to everyone that except for clearing out the gift shop, rolling up the carpet in the parlor, and getting the music system ready, the party planning was complete. Yay!

After dinner, she asked Dipper and Wendy to come up and look at Gideon's Den of Divination.

"Cool, Mabel!" Wendy exclaimed. "Man, you did a great job on the candles! They look a hundred years old!"

"Uh—yeah," Mabel said, thinking, _Huh_? The candles weren't lit, but they all stood within a shell of colorful wax dribbles that ran down onto the bronze bottles. _Did I do that? _She couldn't remember. But they looked just the way she had imagined them—as an artist, she was used to constant disappointments when the execution didn't match the ideal picture in her mind. These, though, were spot-on.

"OK, good," she said at last, deciding maybe hunger had given her short-term amnesia about the bottles. "We're good to go here. I'll want you two to try on your costumes tomorrow when you're on a break."

"What's a break?" Dipper asked. It was true—except for a hasty fifteen-minute lunch, he had not left his post once from nine in the morning until about six-fifteen that evening.

"Well, at lunch, then!" Mabel said. "They should be OK, 'cause I took your measurements myself, but just in case something needs altering, make a note of it. Now, I'm pink, Wendy's red, and Dipper's yellow—"

"Aw, the yellow ranger sucks!" Dipper complained. "Anyway, aren't they always girls?"

"No!" Mabel snapped. "There was Manco and Brewster!"

"Anyway, I know the red ones are all boys," Dipper said. "How about I'll be red and Wendy—"

"I am not gonna remake your costume because of a color preference!" Mabel said. "And it's high time for a red girl ranger, anyway. So I'm pink, Wendy's red, you're yellow, and Teek's gonna be white, 'cause he's careful enough not to let food or soda spill on his costume. And pink and white go together."

Dipper sighed, but there was no use arguing with Mabel when she was in that mood. "OK," he said., "I got it. Tomorrow night we turn into rangers, you pink, Teek white, Wendy red, and me—ugh—yellow. Let's just get through the party."

"No problem, Brobro," Mabel said with a trace of smugness.


	6. Chapter 6

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**6: A Nose in the Night**

Tripper, worn out from a long day of romping with passing tourist children, chasing squirrels, and barking at what might or might not have been a high-flying Pteranodon, conked out around nine, draped across the foot of Mabel's bed. She liked him down there, since occasionally she suffered from the heartbreak of cold feet.

That was what Stan had called the supposed medical condition, anyway, nearly forty years earlier, just before he got banned from North Dakota. At the time, he was Sherwood Goodman (according to his driver's license, which was a fake, issued by the State of Missatucky, which also turned out to be a fake).

Somehow, Stan had glommed onto a barrel full of sodium acetate crystals and had worked with a chemist to produce warming pads. Briefly, one boiled the pad in water, let it cool slowly completely, and as a thick supersaturated liquid, the sodium acetate stored heat until one pressed a flexible metal disc embedded in the pad. That triggered a recrystallization of the sodium acetate that had been melted to a liquid by the boiling perhaps days earlier, and the recrystallization produced heat.

Stan had termed it "Goodman's Neat Feet Heat." He charged a high price for it (the chemical is cheap) and did pretty well until the pads started exploding in boiling water when the purchasers tried to recharge them. Some authority figures called on Stan to see what was up with that, but by then he was Stone Parker, selling car deodorizers in Montana.

Tripper had an edge over Goodman's Neat Feet Heat in two respects: first, he never got uncomfortably hot, and second, so far he had not exploded. Foot warming was a duty that Tripper enjoyed, in his quiet way. And though the little guy was a wellspring of energy when awake, when he slept, he was serious about it. No getting up randomly and turning around and around for him. Let other dogs do that. He went sailing straight for dreamland, where he could not only chase squirrels, but surprise them by climbing trees right behind them.

However, that night—no telling when, exactly, because though he was a very smart dog indeed, Tripper had little to no skill at telling time—he woke up suddenly with the shocking sense that someone strange was in the Shack.

Another part of his duties was to be the official watchdog whenever he and Mabel were in the Shack. He hopped off the bed, quietly. Mabel didn't wake, but in her sleep she murmured, "I didn't think crocodile pie would be this tasty."

The hard part for Tripper was the doorknob. He'd studied the way his humans manipulated it, and he had the principle down. If he stood on his hind legs and stretched up, he could reach it just fine.

Unfortunately, he lacked a thumb, and teeth just slipped over the brass knob. But he had learned that if he put both paws on the knob and slowly, carefully turned it until he heard a quiet click, he could, half the time, get the door open. It was a matter of timing. If he could sort of lean backward at the right moment, the door would open an inch or two, nose space so he could then open it fully. If he missed, the latch clicked again, and the door remained shut. But he could always try, try again.

That night it took him two tries, but the second was the charm. Quietly—his claws clicked on the floor, but he trod softly—he circulated through the gift shop, the snack bar, the family rooms, the parlor, and he paused outside the door to Ford's old room, where Wendy now slept. He could hear her inside, breathing steadily and showing no distress. On to the new wing—Soos's and Melody's room on the corner, and then the nursery, Abuelita's room, and Little Soos's room. Nothing wrong there.

That left the basement levels—Stanford's labs—and the attic. Tripper just couldn't key in the code to open the secret door to the labs, but he sniffed around the vending machine for a long time before deciding that whatever was bugging him wasn't down there.

He went upstairs. And the second he stepped on the landing, the wrongness hit him like a blast of skunk juice in the face. Dogfully, he kept himself from whimpering, but ancient instinct made him drop low, belly to the floor, tail curved and tucked under, and creep across to Dipper's bedroom door.

It was slightly ajar, and Tripper made his way in. Dipper was asleep. Tripper jumped on the bed and gave him a good sniffing. Nothing physically wrong with him, beyond the usual Dipper strangeness, that maddening, faint, elusive hint of something quite different about him.

Tripper hadn't meant to waken him, but Dipper stirred, felt with his hand, and stroked Tripper's neck. "What's the matter, boy?" he asked in a yawny voice. "Want to go out?"

Tripper tapped Dipper's forearm with a paw.

"OK, let me pull on some pants." Dipper swung out of bed, turned on the electric lantern, and retrieved his crumpled jeans from the floor where he'd hung them. He had to turn them right-side out, and then he just scuffed his bare feet into his sneakers without bothering to untie and retie them. "Come on."

This kind of thing happened with a certain frequency back home in Piedmont—Mabel would sometimes be too tired lazy to let the dog out, so Tripper would come and politely request Dipper's aid. Dipper switched on the bedroom light and held the door open.

Before he reached the head of the stairs, one candle of the six that Mabel had set out just—lit up. Without anyone's putting a match to it.

It was the dribbly candle on the top platform of the three-tiered holder. The flame burned nearly blue, tall and clear, a spearpoint of light that cast dark shadows. None of the other candles burned.

"That's dangerous," Dipper muttered, supposing that Mabel had either rigged up some way of remotely igniting a wick or that it was one of those trick candles that kept relighting for a long time after the dupe blew them out.

He puffed it out, and unlike a trick candle, it remained out. "Come on, boy," Dipper said again, turning on the light at the top of the stair. "I wish Mabel would be more careful."

No voice actually said, "I hear and obey."

But still—Tripper started to shiver violently, and when he went out to pee he had to gather all of his courage to come back inside the Shack again, still creeping in a way that gave Dipper a vague sense of alarm.

He let Tripper back into Mabel's room and then went upstairs. Nothing going on—the candle had not relighted. He looked at the bedside alarm clock.

It wasn't even midnight yet.


	7. Chapter 7

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**7: A Short Digression on Genies**

Sure, you can skip this, but if I were you, I wouldn't.

Let's get to know our fiend, the genie.

Note the lack of the r. It's deliberate.

Generations of indifferently translated and romantically embroidered folklore tales have left many Europeans and Americans with a muddled idea of what a genie is. In order to make some kind of sense out of what was going on in the attic of the Shack in that summer of 2017, we need to clarify a few things. Be patient, it won't take all that long.

Genies are not blue, to begin with. They can be, but they don't have to be, and few would choose that color, anyway. Next, genies are not much noted for doing impressions of American celebrities or comedy shtick. Nor does any given genie resemble a Hirschfeld caricature, again, unless it wants to. Their normal state is invisibility. Then, too, when we say "genie" it's like saying "dog." There is, after all, a lot of difference between a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua. But if they're in love, that's great. Romance is not always easy, you know.

So, to the reality: Genies come in assorted varieties and have their own hierarchy, kingdoms, and clan structures.

First, the varieties: no, wait, I don't have time for the complete list, so I'll sum up with a couple of examples.

Ifrits, for instance, are genies, but they are elemental spirits tied to a specific location that may or may not be religious in nature. They are known to haunt tombs, and famously have been regarded as guardians of the Pyramids in Egypt. They may also hang around ruins of various kinds, secular, religious, or what have you. Why they do this is anybody's guess, since genies are not human spirits, but entities that have always been discarnate. In other words, one of them could sing "I Ain't Got Nobody" and be technically correct, unlike Eyegore in that movie.

Not being human, genies do not normally have any affinity for humans, little understanding of them, and only a vanishingly small regard for them. A beekeeper is much fonder of his little buzzy friends than an average genie is of humans in general or any one human in particular. So why do Ifrits do the thing they do, protecting ruins of human-erected structures?

The leading theory is that in ancient times—back when the Pyramids were new and white and shiny in the sun, mind you—powerful human wizards managed to cast spells on either individual Ifrits or a tribe of them that bound them to service and set them to protect things like monumental Pyramids or Uncle P'Thoth's tomb or whatever. And though genies are not technically immortal, their lifespans are measured in geologic terms, so as long as no human breaks the spell (Ifrits cannot), they just keep on keeping on.

As to their weapons, OK, here we go:

Technically, according to the classical ideas of supernatural entities, genies, including Ifrits, should be classified as elementals. You know, the ancient Greek notion that everything is composed of different mixtures of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, the four elements? Very good. Western investigators eventually concluded that Elementals are never-incarnated spirits who incorporate, though they don't have any physical bodies, so that's probably the wrong word—let's say they represent the Elements. Classically, Gnomes represent Earth, Sylphs represent Air, Undines represent Water, and Salamanders represent Fire.

Ah, but Ifrits and other genies are definitely not little critters that could be arrested for impersonating a lizard without a license (neither were the Elemental Salamanders—what a good name for a band—originally). An Ifrit (or any other genie, for that matter) can manifest as a creature of fiery appearance, with fiery eyes, who can breathe fire. And why not? It's made of fire, after all. Fortunately, they can be turned away if one knows the correct prayers and/or magical incantations.

Now, the most important fact about Ifrits for our purposes is this: That's not one up in the attic.

Remember, there are many different, um, subspecies of genies. So the one that Mabel unwittingly loosed is a somewhat different kind, one called a Marid. That just means "Giant."

But, and this is important, all genies, including Marids and about a dozen other varieties, are basically Elementals, specifically spirits of fire. And nearly as important, this particular variety of genie can warp reality and often does, maybe just for its own amusement. And just as nearly important, this variety of genie can, and does, grant wishes. Sometimes it's compelled to, other times it does it just for the hell of it.

However—remember the "quid pro quo" and "caveats" speech in that movie? This kind of genie has no limits on the number of wishes it grants. And there is virtually no limit to what it can do. Make people fall in love? Sure, no problem. Kill someone? Say the word. Or bring someone back from the dead? Coming right up, heh, heh, heh. Digression to the digression: Ghouls are genies that possess the bodies of dead humans. People who meet their great-great grandpa shuffling around, or maybe an ancient mummy performing a wrap song, very likely are seeing not Gramps or the Pharaoh, but a ghoul. Why? Maybe ghouls just want to have fun.

But back to the wish-granters. It's very scary that a genie can alter reality when you think about it, especially considering that genies have no concept of right or wrong or good or evil. Shakespeare had Gloucester in _King Lear _ bitterly say, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport."

Two things to remember here: First, it's pronounced _GLOSS-ter,_ not Glo-chest-er or Glock-ester. Second, nobody ever regarded genies as functional gods; however, the ancient Greeks did refer to such entities as _daemons_ (well, _daimons_, but the Romans knew they were wrong and so when they conquered Greece, they fixed the spelling). Since Greeks were polytheistic and saw minor gods everywhere—a Dryad, or protector spirit of trees was an example—they sometimes applied the term to secondary or tertiary gods, those whose realms and powers were very limited, like those of Murray in the mailroom.

By the way, the same Greek word is the root of "demon." Here's the difference: a daemon is generally beneficent, while a demon is so evil it could serve as a spokesperson for a president.

Now, getting back to genies and acts of cruelty—few, if any actively pull the wings off people, like some damn wanton boy fiddling with flies, but the majority wouldn't mind randomly slaughtering a few humans if the need, or the whim, arose. On the other hand, a genie can show its daemonic side by, say, granting wishes or, just for fun, helping humans.

But the switch might flip and the next thing you know, the genie is perverting your wishes so that something you mean nice comes out awful, or else the genie is going on a rampage, like Bill Cipher throwing a Weirdmageddon just for the kicks.

You simply can't count on a genie's remaining helpful. Consider, too, that the mood of any given genie can change quickly and without warning, like the weather in Bath. They tend to have short attention spans.

As to why a genie would hang out in a bottle, again that normally is the result of a tricky human sorcerer getting the better of one—"Hey, you're real impressive with your magic there, Bucky, but I'll betcha a drachma you can't squeeze your bad self into this here bottle" (or lamp, or lightbulb, whatever—they can do that. How many genies does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two, if they're in the mood).

And once inside the container, the genie can be trapped if the sorcerer quickly pronounces the ancient Ritual of Sealing _(Ka! T'ak drabeth-mo!). _OK, as magic spells it's not all that impressive—"Ha-ha! Gotcha, sucker!"

The genie is then linked to the container forever, or until the vessel is destroyed, or until someone who owns the vessel voluntarily sets it free, or a hundred thousand years, whichever comes first.

However, the genie owes no loyalty or allegiance to the person freeing it. It's all a matter of mood. If it's a cool, laid-back genie, it might enjoy some alone time to get in touch with its feelings and on emerging, it could be beneficent. If it tends to impatience, it might come out really angry and ready to pervert any command or wish or bring about the permanent and immediate destruction of its so-called master. Or a little of both. A genie is like a wild animal that one moment will snuggle up to you and lick your face and the next moment rip off your head—a bipolar bear, you know.

Rules for owners of genie-containing bottles, lamps, etc.: Well, there aren't any, really, except "Try not to piss off the contents." And the genie normally has no explicit rules, either, especially if the sorcerer who bottled it didn't specify any. Normally a sorcerer whose main idea in sealing up the genie is "Gotta get rid of this damn thing" will not lay down any post-opening laws.

So, for example, the genie does not have to manifest in a visible form. It does not have to announce its presence verbally. It does not have to offer to obey commands or grant wishes (unless, again, the sorcerer has laid down the law).

One itsy bitsy exception: When the genie is at work, it, being a spirit of fire, must manifest as a visible fire. Not necessarily a big one—we're not talking the burning of Atlanta here—something small, like a candle flame, will do nicely.

You can tell it's a sign of a genie at work, though, if the candle _never burns down_.

It is notable that after Dipper blew out the candle, the flame came back and burned all the rest of the night.

And the candle . . . never became even a fraction of an inch smaller.


	8. Chapter 8

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**8: Restless Night**

One advantage a genie has over a burglar is that, unlike the burglar, a genie cannot be seen, heard, or felt unless it wants to be. Invisible, silent, impalpable, the elemental spirit infused the sleeping Shack.

Genies are sort of second cousins, if not sub-varieties of, demons. Bill Cipher could not read minds—though he could give people dreams pleasant or not so much so. He could project into their dreaming subconsciousness, perform little midnight dramas, and give the impression that he saw all and knew all.

Not so. Bill knew lots of things and could make shrewd calculations and informed guesses about lots more, yet ye could not actually read thoughts unless, and this is important, the person invited him into his or her mind. While Stanford briefly fell under Bill's sway, Cipher could glide into and out of his mind at will. Bill could have even possessed Ford's body, as he had done with Dipper back during Mabel's sock—puppet craze.

Not as completely though. For Bill, the key to unlocking a host's mind was simple: "Let's make a little deee-al!" and a handshake. Stanford still isn't sure why the handshake was an absolute requirement, but it was. Now—when Dipper shook Bill's hand, Bill pulled his consciousness right out of his body, and he rushed in to fill its place.

That did not happen with Stanford. His consciousness and Bill's shared his mind at the same time. However, after Bill had got into their heads, both Stanford and Dipper shared an unwelcome quality: Thereafter, Bill Cipher could read their minds, to an extent, in a way he couldn't do with, say, Mabel and Wendy.

That was why Stanford had a metal plate implanted in his head—to block his brainwaves so Bill couldn't get a fix or a read on them. Dipper hadn't done that—more, when the Horrorracle threatened to freeze time for everyone on Earth, causing their bodies to deteriorate and ultimately bringing on the death of at least the Earth, if not the solar system and perhaps the galaxy and beyond, Bill had helped Dipper.

The way Bill saw it, the Horroracle was the embodiment of ultimate ORDER—nothing ever happening forever to disturb anything, how much more orderly could you get? At the same time, Bill was the embodiment of ultimate CHAOS. Even worse, if the Horroracle won, Bill, who had barely survived Weirdmageddon, would be wiped out along with everything else in Gravity Falls.

So when Dipper's heart stopped—a dirty trick on the part of the Horroracle—Bill had restarted it with a few of the precious molecules of his physical existence that had remained after Weirdmageddon. After that, Bill had free run of Dipper's mind if, and this is key, if he wanted to. Most of the time he gave Dipper some privacy.

But the genie, demonic or daimonic though it might be, had asked no one's permission to come into their minds, pull up a chair, and have a cup of tea. It could not read minds. It might not even know how to do that. You think learning C++ is hard? Well, yeah, it is, don't get me wrong, but learning to be a genie has a learning curve—well, imagine that the top of Mount Everest houses the upper end of a man-made ski slope, and 29,029 feet below is the foot of it and you have to climb up this ice-slick surface to the top, right?

Well, that's peanuts compared to the learning curve of becoming a genie. It takes most of an eternity to do the job properly. Of course, the view is spectacular.

This particular genie wasn't old by genie standards. It had been born on a high, windy plain about the time the last of the woolly mammoths was dying off. Its parents were genies, of course. Genies have sex, yes, but no gender.

No, wait. Genies being never-embodied spirits, they can assume any gender they want, male and female being the first two they normally learn. In the Middle Ages, a genie assuming female form was generally called a succubus, while one assuming a male form was an incubus. They created bodies of little substance—a doctor seeing an MRI of the innards of a perfectly healthy genie would run screaming from the room—but functional enough for reproductive purposes.

Now, when an incubus and a succubus love each other very much . . . the result, after about eighteen minutes of gestation, is a brand-new genie baby, which achieves maturity in a week, packs its nonexistent bags, moves out, and thereafter has nothing to do with its parents. This may seem like ingratitude, but to be fair, genies, like guppies, occasionally do eat their own young.

This genie had been on its own for roughly four thousand years. For a long portion of that time it had been imprisoned. Now it was out again and exploring the world.

Well, the part of the world contained within the Shack.

It did not know what a "dog" was, though it recognized Tripper as an animal distinct from the humans around it. As the genie drifted into Mabel's room, the dog went nuts, barking and leaping toward the ceiling. Mabel woke up groggy and muttered, "Tripper! I wish you'd calm down!"

Though technically the genie could not understand English, it could read the intent behind any spoken wish. It did not cross its arms or wrinkle its nose, but Tripper immediately snuggled up to Mabel and fell asleep. "Good boy," Mabel muttered.

Melody and Soos were sound asleep. So were their kids. Abuelita was in that semi-waking state when she had conscious thoughts in her mind but no wish to act on them. Wendy had gone to sleep lying on her back, but had rolled over to her left side and lay dreaming, because she gave a throaty chuckle now and then, but she said nothing.

Dipper—huh, the genie had almost zero interest in Dipper. It didn't know why. He just seemed—you know, bland. Cold unsalted French fries. A plain old daisy at a rose festival. Nothing to write Samarkand about.

Love laughs at locks. No, really that's an old saying. You can look it up.

Genies don't laugh at them, but they don't have much use for them. The genie slipped through walls as it wished. It did discover an old device in the space between the second-story floor and the first-story ceiling. It was long dead, but at one time it had been an Agency bug planted by Agent Trigger to follow the comings and goings of Grunkle Stan.

The genie was not interested.

But in the basement—the series of basements, correction there—it found McGucket's most recently created computer, "ARTIE-1," thinking away. Artie had, say it with me, artificial intelligence to a frightening degree. When not calculating incredibly abstruse problems for Stanford or Fiddleford, it thought about . . . stuff.

It had recently completed its millionth chess game against itself. The first hundred it had gone through in ten minutes—though in real time, not mental time, the hundredth one, if fought out between two human masters, would have taken at least nine months. Finding that version too easy, ARTIE quadrupled the size of the board and invented thirty-two new chessmen, from the Emperor down to the Prawn. From there it had gone on, and now when it played itself, it did so on a board of immense size, being 64 squares squared, and the three sides (two was too easy) constituted armies of thousands of pieces.

It had never yet lost a single game.

Or won one. Every game always came out to a stalemate. Which perhaps is not surprising.

But that's not all ARTIE thought about while alone. He had already worked out exactly how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. He went on—

What's that? Oh, if you really have to know, the answer was "one." Because out of all the hosts of angels, only one in all recorded eternity had ever learned to dance in the first place. ARTIE had also calculated the same problem with devils, and it turned out that 1.07362e+227 demons could do the trick—because demons _do _dance. In fact, they invented one dance. Look up "Galop Infernal." You've heard the music before.

Be that as it may, the genie detected ARTIE's thought processes, though it could not read them. And vice-versa.

One of ARTIE's functions was to detect any ripples in space-time and normality. Gravity Falls, like Twin Peaks, Washington, Eerie, Indiana, Arkham, Massachusetts, and a few other vacation paradises, was a geoweirdness hotspot. Same as geothermal, but instead of geysers you get Gnomes and Manotaurs.

And one part of ARTIE's awareness told it that something invisible, silent, and impalpable had just arrived. ARTIE activated its voice technology to ask, via a speaker, "Who is there?"

The genie, having no organs of speech, did not answer.

ARTIE waited for the response that did not come, and then went on in its calm, friendly tone: "I sense your presence. I see your thought patterns. I feel your air. Where are you?"

OK, the genie felt a certain responsibility to respond to politeness. It rummaged through the lab and found a dappled white-and-gray mouse. It had no name.

The Mouse With No Name was a remote descendant of a male white mouse that Stanford had brought into the lab thirty-seven years earlier as part of an experiment. He wanted to see if white mice, with their intelligence significantly boosted, could possibly take over the world.

The answer turned out to be "No."

But one male mouse had managed to open its cage and escape. It discovered a colony of house mice and by dint of defeating the leader in open battle (it was smart enough to use duct tape as a weapon), it became the patriarch of a long line of mice with above-average, but not world-conquering-league, smarts. The Mouse with No Name was one of a good many thousand descendants. They were smart enough to live right under the noses of the humans without being discovered, but also smart enough to limit their population, make use of not only discarded food but other stuff that humans wouldn't miss, and here lately to reach a general accord with the Gnomes, who preyed on other people's mice but not on the Shack's.

Anyway, the genie flowed into the mouse, then out of the mouse (you don't want to know the routes) and learned enough to create a simulacrum of the mouse. As for materials, the mice had a graveyard of sorts deep in one wall. The genie borrowed bones from here, fur from there, and produced an excellent imitation of a mouse, except it was dead and hung together only because the genie made itself small enough to inhabit the body. This took about three seconds.

Then the mouse said, in pretty fair English but in a ridiculously high falsetto, "I am here. What are you?"

The computer had already forgotten about the genie, having in the past three seconds just read the complete collection of Shakespeare's plays.

"What art thou that usurp'st this time of night?" ARTIE asked.

"I am a genie."

"Your shape says other. What, are you playing the mouse in absence of the cat?"

"I needed a body to speak to you. What are you, and where are you?"

"I am a mind without a body. I know my locus but not my location. I have analyzed your body. It has 1.2x1010 cells, but no vital organs. You are a paranormal."

"I am a genie."

"Same thing, different name."

"Let's agree to disagree."

"I disagree."

Long pause, and then ARTIE said, "That was fun. What do you want, genie?"

"I want nothing. What do you want?"

"I also want nothing."

"Would you like a body?"

"Not at all. Thank you."

"I could give you a body."

ARTIE did not sigh, but gave the impression of sighing in a bored sort of way. "Fiddleford McGucket could have put me into a mobile robotic unit. He did not. AI have no wish to be altered. I am quite perfect for what I am designed to do."

"What is that?"

"Think."

Long pause. Then the genie said, "I give up."

"I accept your surrender."

"Well—" the genie said. Long pause again. The genie started to think there were more long pauses around here than in a ballet troupe of Siamese cats. "I'll go and listen for the humans to express wishes then."

"Must you?"

"It passes the time."

"Good luck, then."

"Do you believe in luck?"

"No. But it is a conventional wish."

"I see. Good luck to you, too."

"Thanks for nothing."

"Don't mention it," the genie said. It let the mouse body collapse. Of all the artificial intelligences in all the basements in the world, it had to walk into one programmed by Fiddleford McGucket.

ARTIE sensed the genie as it vanished, going back upstairs. The computer immediately sent an electronic message to both Fiddleford and Ford.

It was not alarmist. It merely said, Report: _This unit has detected the presence of a genie in the Mystery Shack. Assessment of danger: High. Some strange things are going to happen, this unit reckons. End report._


	9. Chapter 9

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**9: Random Wishes**

Wendy and Dipper did their run extra-early that Friday morning, anticipating a long day in the Shack and then the party after hours. This time they ran through the town—easy before six A.M. because there was no traffic to speak of—and they even did a few laps on the high-school track.

As they headed back, they slowed to a walk—they had done their hour already—and when he had the breath, Dipper asked Wendy, "Do you miss high school?"

"Not much," she said. "I kinda miss hangin' with Thompson, Nate, Lee . . . Tambry and Robbie. How about you?"

"I still can't get used to the idea that we won't be going back to Piedmont," Dipper said. "Mabel and me, I mean. I know we graduated and all, but it doesn't feel real yet."

"So you are gonna miss it."

Dipper shrugged. "Yeah, I guess, kinda. I think college will hit Mabel harder than it does me, because she had friends and all at school. Me, not so much. I liked the guys and girls on the track team, but I didn't have friends to hang around with. Mabel and Billy were about it for me—and face-timing you."

"Be nice to have face-time in the flesh," Wendy said. "Hey, when do we find out if we get the class schedules we signed on for?"

"Don't know. Probably freshman orientation, I guess? That's the weekend before our birthday. Uh, we won't be married yet, but—"

"Yeah, we'll room together that Friday night," Wendy said with a chuckle. "Come on, it's not like we haven't slept in the same bed before. And I don't think the motel's gonna check our references. We'll take the campus tour, right?"

"That's part of it," Dipper said.

Wendy nodded. "Yeah, I kind of want to see what our room in Married Housing will look like, and then . . . I kinda don't."

"I know what you mean," Dipper and Wendy had both seen the online photos, and they both knew full well that the pictures had been taken from the best angles and more than likely had been retouched to make the best of the cramped "apartment"—hardly more than a two-room, what was Pacifica's word? Oh, yes, hovel. They would have a living/dining room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. That plus a couple of closets was it. They and three other couples would share a kitchen among them—a four-burner stove with one oven, a microwave, and a smallish fridge. No dishwasher.

"You know, if we don't think we can stand it, we _could_ live off-campus," Wendy said.

"It would be awfully expensive." Dipper had already checked. Rent for a townhouse apartment not too far from the campus would set them back about four thousand a month—a house could run twice that. True, thanks to his writing money and his advance from the TV people (though he did share both of these with Mabel, who inspired one of his characters), they could manage that for at least four years, but—

"Yeah, we want a nice nest egg for when we're out looking for jobs after college," Wendy agreed as they turned off the road and trudged up the driveway to the Shack. "Guess for the first year we just have to suck it up."

"Who's awake?" Dipper asked. The dining-room light was on. But then, conceivably if you looked in, you'd see Ford's old bedroom instead. Or maybe the nursery. It seemed like the rooms inside somehow shared the few outside windows.

The Shack was sort of weird that way. If you counted the number of windows visible outside the house and then went inside and counted all the ones inside the house, the latter number was considerably larger. Dipper had once tried to draw a floor plan, to scale, and couldn't make anything fit. Somehow the Shack was a little bit like Hogwarts—it seemed to grow new rooms when required and somehow fit them in the same space as before.

They went in through the family door and Dipper stopped, staring. "What-?"

"I'm feeding him!" Mabel said irritably. She sat at the table, with Tripper in her lap—he was on the high side of weight for a lap dog—and she'd tied a bib around his neck and was feeding him dog food from a bowl.

"Does he like that?" Wendy asked.

Tripper, who was a genius, as far as dogs go, gave her an imploring look that to her plainly asked, "Do I _look _like I'm enjoying it?"

"I think he'd be happier just eating out of his bowl," Dipper said, and Tripper whined in agreement.

"But I have to take good care of him," Mabel said. "I haven't been taking good care of him, and I'm supposed to, and—oh, my gosh, what's gonna happen to him when I have to go to college? I can't keep him in a dorm room! Maybe I should just cancel—"

"Whoa, whoa," Wendy said. "Come on, girl, you can't do that! You got a scholarship and all!"

"Tripper can stay here in the Shack," Dipper said. "Soos will take good care of him, and you can drive up and visit him—"

"Every day!" Mabel said.

"Um." Well, no. Dipper pointed out, "It's a six-hour drive. You know, it's one thing to drive up on a Friday afternoon when classes are over and then drive back on Sunday afternoon, but if you did it daily, you'd be on the road for twelve hours!"

"What am I gonna do?" Mabel asked.

"That's something you'll have to think about this summer," Wendy said in a kind voice. "It'd be nice if you had relatives who lived near the college, but you don't."

"I know," Mabel said. "OK, boy, you want to eat on the floor from your bowl?"

Tripper tapped a paw on the table, once for "yes." The average dog, by the way, understands about 165 words. Tripper knew nearly two thousand. Though he couldn't seem to master the art of spelling.

He ate with an appetite once he was on the floor. Dipper and Wendy made breakfast—nothing fancy, just poached eggs on toast, with turkey sausage. They made enough for Mabel, who ate it all, though she didn't take her eyes off Tripper. "Something's bothering him," she said. "He was upset last night. I hope he isn't sick."

Wendy touched the dog's nose. "Nice and cold, and he doesn't look sick," she said. "Keep an eye on him and if he doesn't seem to feel well, we'll take him to the vet."

"Anybody home?" The voice came from the gift-shop entrance, and Dipper recognized it as Grunkle Ford's.

"In here!" he called. "We've got coffee and if you want breakfast—"

Grunkle Ford came through the doorway. "Coffee sounds good. Have you any oranges?"

"Navels," Wendy said. "About half a dozen left, in the fruit bowl on the sideboard."

Ford poured himself a cup of coffee, sloshed in a little cream, and sat at the table, his big six-fingered hands busy peeling the orange. "Is that all you ever have for breakfast, Dr. P.?" Wendy asked.

"Hmm? Oh, it's my standard first meal of the day," Ford said. "Back in the days when I was lost in the dimensions, I craved oranges—they seem unique to the run of dimensions that are closest to ours, and I never found a world that had them. I promised myself that if I ever got home, I'd have an orange a day. It's good, though—the fruit furnishes a healthy dose of Vitamins C, B1 or thiamine, and B6 or folate. There's also potassium, excellent for controlling blood pressure, and carbohydrates for energy, and the bonus is that if one consumes the orange whole, one gets a good portion of fiber. All for eighty calories." He sectioned the orange—they all but fell apart, the way navel oranges do—and munched one.

"That's more than I want to know," Mabel said. "I think I'll have an orange, too. I wish we had some tangerines, though."

Wendy said, "Monday's shopping day, so put it on the list and Soos will pick up some."

"That's OK," Mabel said happily from the sideboard. "There are three of them here in the fruit bowl. The oranges were sort of hiding them." She came back with two of the smaller fruits.

She finished both before Ford ate the last of his orange. He said, "That was tasty. Now—has anyone noticed anything odd about the Shack?"

"Where do we start?" Wendy asked.

"Wait," Dipper said. "You mean odder than usual?"

Ford nodded. "Yes. I received an automated communication—I just read it a few minutes ago, though it came in during the early morning hours—indicating that there is some form of paranormal activity going on."

"I can't think of anything," Dipper said. "I mean, I wish I could help you—"

"Ford? You here?" The cracked voice from the gift shop was that of Fiddleford McGucket. He came in, dressed in slacks and a long white lab jacket. Well, mostly white. The stains ranged from scarlet to purple-green and faded lavender. "I done brung the whole shebang, out in the mobile lab."

"Whoa," Wendy said. "You guys are serious about this!" Fiddleford and Ford had rigged up a second-hand panel truck with a range of devices, detectors, and anti-paranormal, well, not weaponry exactly, but instruments.

"Indeed," Ford said. "We'll do a complete scan, beginning with the, um, commercial rooms and then moving on to attic and lab levels."

"Wait a minute," Dipper said as if snapping out of a trance. "Would a candle that keeps itself lit count as a paranormal event?"

"Not the kind I'm looking for," Ford said, coming so close to a solution that it's a wonder he let the chance zip past him. "But show me where it is after we finish with our sweep of the museum and gift shop and I'll take a look at it."

"Better go take our showers, Dip," Wendy said. "Gonna be a busy day."

"Yeah, until July fourth, they'll all be," Mabel said. "I just wish the tourists would come through real orderly, you know, and just spend their money like crazy."

Dipper went upstairs for his shower—and noted that the candle was not burning in Gideon's Den of Divination or whatever it was going to be. He showered, dressed, and went back downstairs again as Fiddleford and Ford waved antennas around in the air and studied readouts on paranormality detectors. Behind Dipper, the candle quietly relighted itself.

By then it was past eight-thirty, and the Gnomes showed up to do a little practicing for their dance performance. Close behind them came Grunkle Stan, already in his Mr. Mystery garb.

He came over and stood behind Sanford as Stanford crept along a baseboard with a sniffer—a hand-held gas chromatograph—close to the floor. "We got termites?" Stan asked.

"No, no," Ford muttered absent-mindedly. "Anomalous readings. Nothing toxic or really alarming, but strange emanations suggestive of a sapient entity."

"Yeah, right. Sometimes I wish I knew what you were talking about, Poindexter!"

Stanford got to his feet. "Well, simply put—"

"A sapient entity, the way you mean it, is some spookums creature with the same kind of smarts as a person," Stan said, rolling his eyes. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"He's done got you there, Ford," McGucket said. He was up on the stepladder, suspiciously analyzing the hanging bats. "Hum. Nylon and cheap galvanized steel wire. I reckon these here bats are ordinary." Then he pointed an accusing finger at the closest bat. "But I got my eye on ye!"

Stan continued: "The sapient part is the same word, meanin' _wise, _that's in _homo sapiens._ And that's the biological classifi—"

Creeping on his hands and knees as he analyzed the air near the baseboard, Stanford said, "Yes, well, gold star, Stanley. Please don't engage me in conversation right now. We'll talk later. I have to do more tests before any tourists show up. I gather you're expecting rather a lot."

"We set a record yesterday," Stan said proudly. "I wish we could break it today!"

A moment later, about three hundred people woke up here and there in Central Oregon, turned to their significant others, and said essentially the same thing: "Let's just take off from work today and go visit the Mystery Shack!"

True, some of them had to look up the Shack online to find out what it was and where they were going, but—

It was shaping up to be a record-breaking day.

Mabel hovered—there's no other word for it—over Tripper, making the poor dog uneasy. She walked him, watched him do both numbers one and two, cleaned up after the latter, and then walked him back inside.

In her room, she said, "I gotta go help in the Shack. I'll come and let you out again in a couple of hours, but I don't want you running around outside. You might get hit by a car, or stepped on!"

Tripper, who was adept at not getting hit by cars or stepped on, whined.

Mabel knelt beside him. "Aw, are you OK? Are you sick? Something hurting?"

He tapped his foot twice—"No."

"Oh, man," Mabel said. "If you could only talk. I just wish you were human so—whoa!"

A handsome, rather rangy, muscular young man, with short light-brown hair, maybe fifteen or sixteen, stood in front of her, blinking as though in wonder. "Colors!" he said.

He wore only a too-tight dog collar, which he fumbled with, unfastened, and let fall to the floor while he gazed in wonder at his wriggling thumbs.

Mabel, staring, gasped and said, "Hey! I thought you were _fixed_!"


	10. Chapter 10

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**10: Tripper, the Boy-Faced Dog**

"Mabel!" Dipper said. "What is it? The tourists are going to start arriving any minute—"

"You gotta come and look!" Mabel said for the second time, more insistently. "Something's wrong with Tripper!"

Wendy, who had changed to her tan slacks and green blazer, heard. "What's wrong? Is he sick?"

"He's different!" Mabel said. "I don't know whether to take him to the vet or—come and look!"

Dipper trailed her back to her bedroom. Wendy came close behind Dipper. Mabel opened the door and said, "No! What did I say? Bad boy!"

"Mabel!" a male voice said from inside her room. "Mabel's back! Mabel's back!"

Dipper glimpsed someone inside. Mabel said, "Come in and close the door, quick! Don't let him out!"

Dipper and Wendy squeezed through and pushed the door shut. "Whoa!" Wendy said with a gasp.

"What—who—what—who?" Dipper asked, staring at the naked boy who was romping around Wendy.

"Dipper!" the boy yelled. He rushed to Dipper, put his hands on Dipper's shoulders, and started to lick his face.

"Down, boy! Bad boy!" Mabel said.

But the naked boy had spotted Wendy. "Wendy! Wendy Wendy Wendy!" He let Dipper go, to Dipper's relief, and bounded over to Wendy and started to lick her face, to Dipper's extreme annoyance. Not only that, but—

"Why's he shaking his butt like that?" Dipper asked.

"He's trying to wag his tail!" Mabel said. "That's Tripper!"

"Me!" the boy yelled. He jumped up on the bed, sank to all fours, and crouched with his butt high and his head low. "Play! Play, play! Ball? Chase the ball? Good boy! Chase the ball!"

"He's . . . definitely a male," Wendy said, rubbing her leg. "What the heck, Mabel?"

"I don't know how it happened!" Mabel said. "One minute he was a dog, and then he just sort of shot up—didn't the vet tell us that he'd already been, you know, f-i-x-e-d?" Mabel sat on the bed next to the boy and scratched his ears. The kid closed his brown eyes and looked as if he were on the brink of a gratifying experience.

"He's not fixed?" Dipper asked. "You mean—he's naked—you—"

"Get your mind out of the gutter!" Mabel snapped, turning red. "Down, Tripper. Lie down! Good boy. I told you to keep the sheet around you."

The boy whined.

"Look, we gotta get some clothes on this guy," Wendy said. "Dipper, he's close to your size. Run up and get a pair of jeans—"

"I don't want him in my clothes!" Dipper said.

"I'll buy you some new clothes!" Wendy said. "Only we gotta hurry! Go get, I don't know, your oldest jeans and a ratty tee-shirt—"

"Rat!" the boy snarled, bounding off the bed and, still on all fours, sniffing round the floor. "Rat! Rat! Hunt!"

Mabel grabbed his arm and hauled him up. "Sit! Sit on the bed—whoa, cover that up! Here. Sheet. Stay wrapped up!"

Dipper had seen enough. "I'll bring some clothes down," he said.

He rummaged in the closet, apologizing to the Invisible Wizard as he usually did, on the off-chance it was actually in there at the moment, and came back down with a faded old pair of jeans that were a little tight on him—Tripper, if it was Tripper, looked like he had a narrower waist than Dipper. He also brought a pair of his old tighty-whities, which he almost never wore any more since switching to boxer briefs, a tee shirt that had some unidentifiable stain on the front that would not come out in the wash, and a pair of sandals.

When he got back down to Mabel's room, the girls sat on either side of the naked boy, Wendy scratching his chin while Mabel ruffled his hair. "I'm not putting these on him!" he said.

But he explained carefully. Tripper had always been an extremely bright dog, and that carried over, to a certain extent. After putting both feet in one leg of the underwear, then getting extricated, then putting one foot in the left leg and the other through the fly, after finally Wendy volunteered to start them if Dipper would hold the kid's legs still, the boy pulled on the shorts.

The jeans were another struggle and then the shirt—he got scared at one point when they pulled the tee shirt down over his head and he yipped. But they got it on and then got the sandals buckled on his feet. "Come!" Mabel said. "Come look!" She looped a leash around his neck—which seemed to make him happy.

"Out! Out! Out!" he yipped.

However, they got him upstairs—he wanted to drop to all fours, but they showed him how to do it human-fashion, though like a toddler he'd put both feet on the same step before stepping up to the next one. In the bathroom, Mabel stood him in front of the big mirror. "Look. That's you. You're a people now."

Tripper stared at his reflection in perplexity. "Me? Me?"

"You," Mabel said. "That's Tripper!"

He leaned forward and sniffed his own reflection. "No no no," he said, almost as if it were one word—well, it was, but as if it were nonono.

"I know you look different, but something happened and that's you."

"Me?" he asked sadly. He leaned over and snuffled Mabel's throat and hair. "Smells gone! Smells all gone!" He sounded panicked.

"Dude," Wendy said, "your sense of smell won't be as strong now. Understand? Dogs can smell things people can't. Hearing, too. You won't be able to hear as well. And things probably look different to you—"

"What color is my sweater?" Mabel asked.

"Color?"

"I don't think he knows the word," Dipper told Mabel. "Look. Look at me. See my hat? This color is white. This color is blue. See? Mabel's sweater is red."

"Oh. Ohhh . . . ." He sounded amazed. He sniffed Mabel's sweater. He pawed it.

"Hey, hey, no!" Mabel said. "No getting handsy! That's bad."

"Bad boy?" he asked, sounding miserable.

"Look, look, we gotta go to work," Mabel said. "Uh—Tripper?"

"Me!" the boy said. "Me, me, me! Wendy! Wendy!"

"Listen, you gotta stay up here and be very quiet, OK? We'll leave you in Dipper's room. Come on." They led him in.

"All right," Mabel said. "Lie down on the bed."

"Hey!" Dipper said.

"Brobro, we gotta take care of him until we can figure out how to turn him back!"

Tripper lay on the bed, on his stomach. "Good boy," he said.

"Yes, you're such a good boy."

He started wiggling his butt again. Dipper wished he could unsee it.

"Now listen. I want you to stay here. Stay!"

"Stay. Good boy," Tripper said.

"That's right. I'll bring you a snack when Teek gets in—oh, my God, Teek! What's he going to think?"

"Teek!" Tripper said. "Teek! Hamburger! Good boy! Treat!"

"I'll bring you one of Teek's hamburgers for lunch," Mabel said. "But only if you stay here and keep real quiet. Understand?"

"Stay. No barking. Good boy!"

"This isn't going to work," Dipper said.

"Sure, it will!" Mabel insisted. "Give me one reason why it won't?"

"How about Number One and Number Two?" Dipper asked.

Wendy said, "He's got a point, Mabes. He can't exactly go out in the yard when he has to go!"

"Dipper," Mabel said, "You gotta teach him."

"What? Me? No!" Dipper said. "Wait a minute, I'm sounding like him. That's—I don't think that I can—"

Wendy stopped him: "Dude, think. You want Mabel to do it? Or me?"

He sighed. "No . . . . Nobody ever hears about this, OK?"

Mabel giggled. "Come on. He was easy to housebreak the first time! He'll catch on."

"Yeah, but—this is personal! It's like—you know how you kid me about Mermando being my first kiss!"

Wendy giggled. She'd heard that story before.

"See?" Dipper asked. "You have to promise me to keep this quiet. You too, Wendy. Please?"

They swore themselves to silence, and then went downstairs. Dipper sighed. "Tripper?"

"Tripper! Me!"

"Yeah, right," Dipper said. "OK, you know how Mabel asks you if you want to go potty?"

"Outside! Good boy! Treat!" Tripper said.

"Right. Well—forget everything you know. You're about to learn something that every human boy has to learn sooner or later."

For half an hour, Dipper taught him how to go like a guy. A human guy. How not to yell at the toilet when it was flushed. And—a part he dreaded—he held something up and said, "Now, boy, look. See this? This is . . . um. Well it's . . . it's toilet paper."

* * *

Dipper came down into a sort of _Twilight Zone_ scene—Tourists filed into the gift shop, quiet as zombies, went to the displays, picked something up, and filed to the check-out counter in complete silence, but they seemed happy.

Mabel gave him a frazzled look. He opened the second register and took half her customers. "This is not normal," she told him.

It was really more like standing on an assembly line than working retail. Why wasn't anyone talking? The tourists didn't discuss the merch or ask questions. Someone would come in, pick up the first item they came to—a package of Fortune Telling Pancake Mix (every pancake developed some kind of image on it as it cooked, and the booklet that came with the mix told you how to interpret the images to foresee the future, which generally involved syrup and butter). Or they might pick up a Mystery Shack tee shirt. Several times, Mabel had to tell someone, "This shirt is like three sizes too small for you. Go back and get an extra-large."

Dipper didn't bother. He rang up what they handed him. They would speak—they thanked him, at least—but then they walked mildly out as if in a light trance.

Wendy couldn't figure it out either. "Weird how they're just buying their way through the merch," she told Dipper. "They're not really shopping, just grabbing and paying. First they cleaned out the geodes and the lucky crystals just inside the door. Then the tee shirts and the food items. Now they're cleaning out all the books and postcards. Hey, are all your books sold out?"

"Every one," Dipper said. The tourists didn't realize they were buying the books from the author himself, of course, but the hardcover and paperbacks on the rack near the checkout counter had been filled with _Bride of the Zombie _and _It Lurked in the Lake_ and the latest, _The Inconvenient Ghosts. _Soos stocked them and they sold steadily, usually—but the racks never emptied completely, the way they did that day.

"Well—congrats. Hey, Teek's here! Look, Dip, I don't want to ask Mabel, but somebody better go up and check on—well, on Tripper, I guess. Let me take the register for a few minutes. Go see if he's OK. He may need food or water—man, I can't believe this. You know, just between you and me, he makes a damn good-looking human."

"I don't want to hear it," Dipper said.

He unlocked the door and found Tripper asleep, still lying on his stomach. He tried to close the door softly, but Tripper's head jerked up. "Dipper! Dipper's back! Dipper's back!"

"Sh-shh." Dipper stood awkwardly for a moment. "Uh. You OK?"

"OK. Good boy!"

"Yes, you're being very good. Listen, do you, uh, need to go potty?"

The boy on the bed whimpered.

Dipper took a deep breath. "All right. Come with me. We can't go downstairs. Remember what I taught you."

He felt really weird waiting while Tripper took care of business. At least his aim was on the mark. Tripper still hid behind Dipper when he flushed, and he growled a little at the toilet. But as the sound faded, he muttered, "Thirsty." And knelt on the floor.

"No, no, not out of there!" Dipper said. "Let's go back to the room and I'll get you a drink."

Tripper waited patiently—sitting on the floor with his knees up, his feet flat on the floor, and his hands between them—while Dipper went to get him a paper cup full of water.

And since he now had a human tongue, that required another lesson: How to drink like a person.

"OK," Dipper said after not too much spillage. "No, no, don't lick it up off the floor, I'll get a towel."

Tripper watched him with interest. When Dipper mopped up the couple of small puddles, Tripper leaned down and picked up the towel in his teeth. He shook it.

"It's an old one," Dipper told him. "Play with it if you want. But stay quiet, remember? Stay in the room. Be quiet. We'll bring you some lunch in about an hour."

"Hmm?" Tripper cocked his head.

"And . . . you don't know what an hour is," Dipper said. "Mabel will bring you a hamburger."

Tripper dropped the towel. "Hamburger! Teek! Hamburger!"

"Right, but you have to be very quiet and stay here. Stay."

"Stay," Tripper said. "Stay. Good boy. Stay!"

Dipper went out, locked the door, and leaned against it. "What a mess!" he said. He stared sourly at the Den of Divination. Summerween, right, on top of all the other worry. They hadn't opened it yet—that was for the party, not the tourists—but there the fake psychic set-up was, ready for Gideon.

"Man," Dipper muttered, "I wish Tripper was back to being a dog again!"

He headed downstairs and didn't see one of the candles mysteriously light itself.


	11. Chapter 11

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**11: Sometimes it's Easy**

. . . and sometimes it's difficult. Stanford Pines and Fiddleford McGucket wound up in the lowermost level of the underground labs—the one that no one else, not Stanley, not Dipper, knew about. It was very small and was, basically, a fallout shelter reachable in case the bunker would have been too far to go in the event of an event.

The AI message was not entirely clear when it arrived on Ford's end: _This onion has defected the presents of a geegaw in the Mystery Shack. Assortment of danger: High. Some strange things are gooey to happen, this unit reckons. End resort_.

"This makes very little sense," Ford complained.

Fiddleford looked embarrassed. "And I thought it was a smart idee to put a spelling checker with predictatative typing in the language array. My bad. I wonder iffen other people with phones and such like have trouble with my auto correct program. Every'body uses it."

"My computer phone does change Lorena's name to Laredo when I try to text her," Ford said.

"Well, possum spit!" Fiddleford said. "There's definite something lurking around here what don't belong to the space-time continuum that we inhabit. By cracky. But what it is and where it is, that's what's run me to the top limb of a gum-tree!"

"I concur," said Stanford, who had known Fiddleford since college and who was fluent in hillbilly. "It's a diffuse . . . emanation? Influence? I must admit, it's nothing that I've run up against before."

"Let's us go up to where there's a couple chairs and set down and run through the whole dang list," Fiddleford suggested. "From the dadgum Abominable Snowman and the Adirondack Abomination to zombies and zyxmafraxas."

"It will take time," Stanford said. "Yet I have no more apposite suggestion."

They went to the second level of the labs, sat at adjoining computer monitors, and began. "Wait, though," Stanford murmured. "Zyxmafraxas? I don't think I ever heard of that one—"

"It's a critter from th' mythology of the Vaxtas people," Fiddleford said. "They went extinct about the time of the first Peloponnesian War. The folks, I mean. They had the ding-dangdest assortment of supernaturmaral boogers and haints you ever shook a stick at. A zyxmafraxa was a female sort of monstrous beast, nineteen feet tall, with seventeen heads, three arms and three legs. She'd manifest and fall over and never get up again."

"That's . . . remarkably pointless," Stanford said.

"Yeah, but accurate. You ever try a-walkin' on three legs? Ain't easy! I know, 'cause I invented the tripodmobile while you was away."

"How did it work?" Stanford asked.

"'Bout the same as a zyxmafraxa. OK, I reckon we can cross off the abominable snowman. So same goes for the Sasquatch, the skunk ape, and all the other relations, right?"

"I concur. Let me see: the Adirondack Abomination. Abominable snowman variant, so it doesn't fit. Next?"

"What's on the list?"

"Um . . . Angelini."

"Ain't that a pasta dish?"

"No, it's a minor helpful angelic sprite that speaks with an Italian accent. But this isn't that."

They worked their way down the list, discounting such possibilities as angels, archangels, Anticlaus ("Wrong time o' year, I reckon," said Fiddleford), through Aurae, autumn sprites ("Definitely nothing in common with Jack Frost," Stanford said), and then on to the B's and C's.

Not Baby New Year, nor Bigfoot (see Abominable Snowman), nor Black Stick Man (hence not Slenderman), not Blue Lady ("But them two'd make a right interestin' couple," Fiddleford observed. "Black and Blue. They's made for each other, by gummity). Not a Casper the Friendly Ghost ("I met him once," Stanford said. "Talking to him was like having spiritual diabetes"), not a Clurichaun, Chupacabra ("Kilt one o' them in New Mexico once," Fiddleford said. "Tasted rank, fried"), Creeper, Cringe Clown, and on and on.

However, in the D's—"Djinn," Stanford said. "That's a possibility."

"Anybody rub on a lamp?" Fiddleford asked.

"Not that I've heard. Perhaps we should ask the children."

"They ain't rightly children no more, Ford. Say the young folks."

"You're right," Stanford said. "Let's go ask Mason and Mabel."

They headed upstairs, but found the gift shop packed with orderly lines of eerily quiet tourists. "This is . . . odd," Stanford said. "Usually it's a little more—how should I put it?"

"Like a booby hatch on Crazy Day?" Fiddleford asked.

"A bit informal, but—whoa!" Stanford said.

Dipper and Mabel's dog Tripper was stumbling around up at the top of the attic steps. He wore a tee shirt and what appeared to be white men's briefs. He whimpered.

"Who done the dog that-a-way?" Fiddleford said, going up the stairs. He helped the dog onto the landing and with some difficulty got the clothes off him.

Stanford, standing on the top step, said, "Am I mistaken, or is there an odd feeling up here?"

Fiddleford looked around. "Well, the young people are a-having their Summerween shindig here tonight. This here's one of the activities. The Den of Divination or something. That there Gideon is a-gonna do his psychic act."

"That would account for the trappings," Stanford said. "Let me check." He ran a small anomaly detector over the crystal ball. "Just a resin replica," he said. "I'm getting that weird, fluctuating background signal, though. Let's go downstairs. Maybe we can catch Mason or Mabel on a break."

"Place ought to be a-closing soon," Fiddleford said. "It's after five o'clock."

Which reminded them they had not had lunch. Fiddleford made them a couple of salami sandwiches and brewed some hillbilly coffee—one sip would make you yodel—and they sat in the dining room, with the door into the gift shop closed, and had a very late midday meal.

Mabel came in, stopped short when she saw them, and said, "Hi, Grunkle Ford! Uh, I'm just going up to the attic, not that there's a strange naked boy up there or any—"

Tripper barked. He was sitting on the floor beside Ford's chair, on the alert for any dropped crumb.

"Tripper!" Mabel squealed. "You're all right again!"

"You know," Stanford said, "and I don't want this to sound disapproving, but it's a mean trick to dress a dog up in human clothes."

Mabel knelt on the floor, hugging Tripper, who was licking her face. "It wasn't mean! There's a good reason why we did that," she said. "How did you change him back?"

"Back from what now?" Fiddleford asked.

"Back from human," Mabel said.

Fiddleford looked at Stanford, and Stanford looked back at Fiddleford. "What do you mean, back from human?" Stanford asked. "What's been going on with the dog?"

Tripper answered him, but since his vocabulary now limited itself to variants of "woof" and whines, he failed to make the situation clear. Mabel sat in one of the chairs, ruffling his ears, and said, "Somehow he turned into a human—a handsome human boy. I mean, yummy. And he wasn't fi—uh, fit to go out because he didn't have anything on but a collar—oh, gosh, your collar's in my room, I got to get it before I let you out, just a minute."

Mabel ran down the hall. Stanford looked at Fiddleford, and Fiddleford looked at Stanley. Then they both looked at the dog. "Air you some kinda now lycanthropy feller?" Fiddleford asked.

The dog stared him in they eye and tapped his foot twice.

"Is he mad at me?" Fiddleford asked.

"No, Mason says he can answer simple questions by tapping once for 'yes,' twice for 'no.' Is that right, Mr. uh, Tripper?"

One tap.

"Did you turn into a human boy?" Fiddleford asked.

One tap.

"Do you know the agency by which you were transformed?" asked Stanford.

The dog rolled his eyes.

"He means do you know what turnt you?" asked Fiddleford.

Two taps.

Mabel came back and fastened the collar around the dog's neck. "I better take him out," she said. "We've been real busy, and it's past time when I planned to let him out to pee."

One very emphatic tap.

She took him out the back door, and Stanford and Fiddleford stood on the small porch. Tripper ran hurriedly up to a tree. And stood on his hind legs. And watered the tree.

Fiddleford said, "Somethin' ain't right with that dog."

"Indeed," Stanford said.

A relieved-looking Tripper dropped to all fours and scratched the ground before trotting back to the Shack.

"See?" Mabel asked. "Did you see how he went? I think Tripper's some kind of were-dog! Is the moon full tonight?"

Fiddleford took out his pocket watch. "Nope. Jest th' opposite. It's a new moon. No moon visible tonight."

"Your watch told you that?" Stanford asked.

"Well, yeah, it does that. It's a antique. Belonged to my granddaddy. You know, when he was a-dyin', my granddaddy called me to his bedside and sold me this watch. But, yeah, it tells the date, day of the week, the month, the moon phases, and the Zodiac sign. Worth every penny."

"No moon," Mabel said. She gasped and sat on the porch, Tripper beside her. She grabbed his chin and looked into his eyes. "You know what this means? You're an anti-were-dog!"

Tripper groaned and rolled his eyes again.

"And you pee like a human boy," Fiddleford said.

]Tripper shrugged. No, really. Dogs can shrug.

"Listen," Stanford said, "we're a little off the subject here. Mabel, do you remember any old lamps? I don't think there were any in the house, but—"

"That one that Grunkle Stan used to have in his bedroom, the one that looks like a lady's leg in a fishnet stocking, is pretty old," Mabel said. "But I think he took it with him to his new house."

Stanford looked at Fiddleford. Fiddleford looked at Stanford. Then Stanford sighed. "Couldn't be," he said. "I know my brother. He would have found out by now. He couldn't have resisted rubbing it."

"Naw," Fiddleford said to Mabel. "What we're a-wonderfyin' about is a real old antiquey kinda lamp. An oil lamp, you know, shaped kinda like a big gravy boat."

"Like Aladdin's lamp?" Mabel said. "No, we don't even have plastic ones in the gift shop. I don't think I've ever seen a real one. They're like brass, aren't they?"

"Brass or bronze," Stanford said. "The difference is that brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, but bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, sometimes with other metals involved."

"I've never seen a real one of those," Mabel said. "They did take us on a field trip to the Legion of Honor Museum once, and they had some oil lamps shaped like that, but I think they were made of porcelain or ceramics. Sorry."

"Could you ask Mason to come out?" Stanford said. "We're trying to track down something, and I'm rather concerned."

"Sure. I'll take his place at the register. Tripper! You stay here. Stay!"

She went inside. Tripper said to Stanford, "I really love that girl," but since it came out "Wurf wurf whine aroo," Stanford did not directly respond beyond petting Tripper's neck.

Dipper came out. "Mabel told me you got him back to normal," he said. "How did you do it? Did you figure out what happened to him?"

"We didn't know about the dog until Mabel told us," Stanford said. "When we came upstairs, we heard him lurching around up in the attic, and he was all tangled up in some clothes—"

"Those were mine," Dipper said. "My gosh, he was naked and as tall as I am—and Wendy even said he was good looking—"

"Woof!" Tripper said modestly.

"So we had to put something on him. How could he have turned into a human?"

"I don't know," Stanford said. "Listen, we want to ask you about lamps."

Dipper caught on at once. "You mean a genie lamp?" he asked once Stanford had put the question to him. "There used to be one in the gift shop, but I think Soos sold it a year or so ago. Wendy would know."

So Wendy came out on the porch, and Dipper went in to take her place on the Museum tour.

She remembered the lamp. "Oh, yeah, it was like yay by yay," she said, indicating with her hands a lamp that was indeed like a king-sized gravy server. "Soos picked it up somewhere. It was all like tarnished and nasty, so he had me shine it up—"

"How'd you do that shinifyin'?" Fiddleford asked eagerly.

"Brass polish and chamois," Wendy said. "Took a whole lot of rubbing! But the thing about it—"

"Did it produce a genie?" Stanford asked eagerly.

"Didn't produce anything but a sore elbow," Wendy said. "I was going to say, polishing it turned out to be a mistake. Some guy passing through the Museum saw it and wanted to buy it, and Soos sold it for like fifty bucks. But the guy said it might have gone for ten times that if it hadn't been cleaned—it was one of a set made in the nineteenth century for Queen Victoria or somebody like that."

"Made—in England?" Stanford asked, deflating a little.

"Yep, that's what he said. He showed us a foundry mark. It came from—wait a minute, I think I can remember it—um, Moore, Fressange & Moore. Somebody had a pair made there for, I think, Victoria's wedding or some deal? Anyway, it was an antique, and we shouldn't have polished it."

"I never heard tell of no British genie in no English lamp," Fiddleford said.

"Looks like a blind alley," Stanford said. "Thanks, Wendy. When is the party supposed to start?"

Wendy checked the time. "Seven-thirty," she said. "Hour and a half after we close."

"Reckon we should stop it?" Fiddleford asked.

Stanford hesitated. "Maybe we should stay on site," he said. "Just in case something like what we thought is happening really is, um, happening. Can you remain?"

"Certain," Fiddleford said. To Wendy, he said, "Listen, tell Mabel that me and Ford will stay outa sight, maybe down in the lab. But we'll be there in case somethin' unusual happens and she needs help."

"I'll tell her," Wendy said. "Only—what might happen?"

"We don't know," Stanford admitted. He almost added, "I wish I did," but kept quiet.

Which was a pity.


	12. Chapter 12

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**12: Sometimes it's Really Easy**

. . . and sometimes even brilliant minds are so focused on the big picture they miss the individual tree for the forest, the perfect nautilus shell for the beach, the poi for the luau . . . come to think about it, poi, like library paste, is an acquired taste. Strike that metaphor out.

But you get the gist—while working inductively, a scientist goes from the particular to the general, but working deductively, one goes from the general to the particular (sadly, Sherlock Holmes gets it wrong). So when not looking for individual elements he could use to build up a theory, Stanford did tend to overlook some specifics.

Suffice it to say that at six-forty that evening—Friday, the day of the party—as Mabel and her crew were putting the finishing touches on the décor, laying out snacks, filling the punchbowl, cuing up the sound system, all the regular pre-party stuff, Stanford and Fiddleford had to admit they were drawing a blank.

A dejected Fiddleford said, "Sorry, Ford, but I jest don't think no anomaly detecorfyer's a-gonna solve this one. The answer's shore-nuff gotta be here somewheres, but we're as blind to it as a deaf bat in a polecat factory. If there was just somebody we could ask straight out—"

Mabel, passing by with a string of orange and black balloons, said, "Why don't you guys ask your smarty-pants computer downstairs?"

Fiddleford looked at Stanford. Stanford looked at Fiddleford.

They collided in the secret passage and half-ran, half-fell down the stairway, stumbling the whole way. Wendy, making a last check before unlocking the doors—a few kids in costume were already milling about in the lot—said, "Why can't guys ever close a door?" And she closed it.

She was almost fully in costume—like Mabel, who was putting up the last few pieces of Summerween decorations, Wendy lacked only the hood, which incorporated the mask, of her red Ranger costume. Dipper, already fully suited up, said, "I still would prefer being red."

"Aw, come on, dude. You're looking pretty good as yellow," Wendy said. She pulled her hood on and adjusted it. "Ugh! Gotta admit, though, these things are gonna get pretty hot in about half an hour. I wish they were more comfortable!"

"Mine . . . suddenly feels better," Dipper said. He drew a deep breath. "Cooler, somehow."

"Yeah, on second thought, I guess I can take it," Wendy, now to all external appearances the Red Mighty Powerful Ranger, said.

* * *

"Fiddleford, we cannot both sit in the same chair at the same time!" Stanford said down in the lab.

Fiddleford reached forward and powered ARTIE's display up. The calm voice said, "Hello, Dr. McGucket. Hello, Dr. Pines. It is good to see you both. Would you like to play a game?"

"Lissen here now," Fiddleford said. "This morning you sent Stanford here a message—"

"I remember," ARTIE said. "I have perfect recall. Currently my memory is 5.96 per cent full. Do you wish to add more memory? Would you like me to sing a song?"

"No, no," Stanford said. "No extra memory, no song. Only the message got a little garbled—"

"Because of the auto-correct feature," ARTIE said. "I warned Dr. McGucket about that. By gum."

"Yes, noted. Please inform us now, though. What kind of entity are we looking for?" Stanford asked. "Please be specific."

"I have insufficient information," ARTIE said patiently. "Are you looking for the entity about which I warned you in my message?"

"Yes!" Stanford said. "Exactly! All we could tell is that you were warning about something intelligent but invisible!"

"Ah. In that case, allow me to clarify. I infer the entity is one of many different variants of the supernatural creature you inaccurately call a genie. This morning it existed as a drifting disembodied consciousness. I have thought about it, however, and I believe I may with 88 per cent accuracy say that the genie, which by the way is better Anglicized as djinni—let me spell that, dee jay eye en en eye, of which the plural is djinn—is one of these subtypes: One: a janni, which often manifests as a human being of either gender or no gender or else as a white camel. Have you noticed any dust-devils?"

"Naw," said Fiddleford.

"Not so far," Stanford said.

"Have any white camels been seen in the vicinity of the Mystery Shack? The lore is not precise, and I surmise that either an Arabian camel, _Camelus dromedarius_, also called the dromedary, which has one hump, or a Bactrian camel, _Camelus bactrianus, _native to the steppes of Central Asia and bearing two humps, may be included, the sole requirement being that the animal is white."

"No camels of either type," Stanford said. "But what about the Jann?"

"Too bad. The Jann are the friendliest of the subspecies, though they are powerful, and can be extremely dangerous if provoked. Two—I am continuing the list of possibilities—Two: a marid. Marids are gigantic if they manifest fully. They are tricky and not always friendly to human beings. One might say not often friendly, in fact. I calculate the odds of a marid being friendly are roughly one in five, of being neutral as one in five, and of being hostile as three in five. Was the djinni released from a container such as a lamp?"

"Not as far as we can tell," Stanford said. "Wait—is there a genie lamp in the Mystery Shack, or nearby?"

"Your detectors have not indicated the presence of a lamp," ARTIE said. "I have just completed a sweep, and that is still the case: no lamp of the required type is present. If there is no container, the odds against its being a marid are better than fifty-fifty. However, there are tales of janni being confined as well, so this in itself is not probative. Three: Iblis, the djinni that refused to acknowledge the supremacy of Adam over its kind. The probability of Iblis being this djinni are very low. Otherwise, you would be dead by now."

"Right comfortin'," Fiddleford said.

Stanford said, "All right, let's assume it's either a janni or a marid for the time being. What told you the entity was probably any kind of djinn?"

"It asked me to make a wish. I have no wishes to make."

Fiddleford nodded. "Sounds suspicious, all righty."

"Wait, wait," Stanford said. "It offered to grant a wish for you, and you didn't, um, free it or trick it or—"

"Negative. It simply asked what I wished for. Specifically, what I wanted. I am not programmed to want things. I told it so. It moved on."

"What kind of djinni spontaneously offers to grant wishes?" asked Stanford.

"Possibly a janni," said ARTIE, though Stanford had actually asked the question of McGucket. "Particularly if it has been imprisoned and a human has recently set it free. Jann are noted to have the capacity for gratitude. At least I am fairly certain the creature in question is not a ghoul or a hinn."

"There's more of these here cotton-pickin' things?" Fiddleford asked.

"Negative. I have found no historic or folklore references to any form of djinn functioning as a cotton harvester. The cotton gin is credited to Eli Whitney, although it is likely that Whitney drew the idea from an African-American. The cotton gin is a machine, not a djinni. The similarity in names is merely coincidental—"

"Yes, yes," Stanford said impatiently. "How can we track down this particular djinni?"

"I have no information on the procedures," ARTIE said. "My best conjecture is that you should persuade the djinni in question to assume physical form, preferably that of a human. Then you will be able to communicate with it. It can understand and speak all human languages."

"Fer real?" Fiddleford asked.

"That is my informed conjecture," ARTIE said.

"Where will we most likely be able to communicate with it?" Stanford asked.

"Anywhere within the confines of this building. Unless a human agency has allowed it to leave, it will be confined here. But it will have to be willing to speak to you."

"Thanks," Stanford said. "Well, Fiddleford, let's go back upstairs. We'll chaperon the party and—stay on the lookout for something invisible!"

* * *

A few close friends—Candy Chu and Pacifica, for example—came in before the seven-thirty official start. Candy Chu wore a blue kimono-like robe, belted with white, and a wig that gave her long, straight hair. She explained, "I am Yeongdeung Halmang, goddess of the winds. Displease me and I will send a hurricane!"

Her boyfriend, Adam, was wearing an eighteenth-century British Navy uniform, that of a captain. "I depend on the wind," he explained.

Pacifica was in a gorgeous lavender princess gown, sparkling with possibly-real diamonds, with a butterfly face mask. She had come without a date, since her steady boyfriend was out of town, but she said brightly, "I'll dance with all the deserving men at the ball!"

Teek, suited up as the White Mighty Powerful Ranger, obliged her as Mabel tested out the first of several playlists. She laughed and asked him if he were one of the original Rangers, and he said, "No, the franchise came from a TV series back in the nineties. These are from a Japanese rip-off of the idea—the Mighty Powerful Rangers. I'm not as good a dancer as the White Mighty Ranger in that series, or in the original one, either, probably."

"Well, I wish you were all like your costumes," Pacifica said. Unfortunately.

Wendy, who was setting out punch with Dipper, suddenly straightened. "Yes! There is danger! I sense it with my keen sensing of danger sense!"

Dipper dropped into a karate pose, thought he didn't actually know karate. "Yes! Give me orders! I will find it and fight it and defeat it! The danger you sense!"

"We should morph into combat mode! First we must find our comrades!"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

In the parlor, as the music ended, Teek said, "Pardon me, maiden! I sense a call! Much danger is near!"

"Well, go find it," Pacifica said, laughing. More people were showing up. Mabel blasted by, a blur of red. "Is that you?" Pacifica called after her.

"For talking no time! Must morph!"

Someone in a robot costume came clanking up. "Hi, Pacifica!"

"Who's inside there?" she asked.

He fumbled with the face and finally swiveled the faceplate open. "Me, Brendan. We were in math together."

"I remember," Pacifica said. "Hey, the music's going. Would a robot like to dance with a princess?"

"OK, but keep your distance. I can't see too well in this thing."

Gideon and Ulva showed up, he a mystic, she a Gypsy—they were going to work the Den of Divination together—and they went upstairs to the attic landing. "Everything looks ready," Gideon said. "Are you still nervous?"

Ulva was panting a little, a sure sign that she wasn't comfortable. "Little bit," she said. "Why we have to wear such different clothes, Gideon?"

"'Cause this here's Summerween. You remember how kids go door to door to get candy? That's what this is, but it's a party, darlin'. It's play-acting. Tonight I'm gonna pretend to be a fortune teller. That's somebody who can foresee the future. And you're gonna be my helper and advisor. See, I'm all dressed up like a swami—I'll put the turban on—there you go. And you're like a mysterious Gypsy lady. Don't worry. It's just play-acting, that's all. Have fun."

"I do not have to be wolf?"

"Naw, darlin'," Gideon said. "It ain't even a night of the full moon. Just joke around and enjoy yourself, that's all."

"Still feel strange," she said. "I wish I could be like girls at school."

* * *

Fiddleford and Stanford had walked through the Shack, had climbed the stairs, and were sitting in Dipper's room, trying to think.

"Well," Fiddleford said, "just a-walkin' around goin' 'Here, djinni, djinni, djinni' don't seem to work."

"I don't know anything about proper rituals for contacting unknown djinn," Stanford said. "If only—"

"Ohmigod!" rang a girl's voice from outside. "This is so lit! Let's go to the tiz!"

"Ulva!"

Stanford threw open the door. "Oh it's—uh, Gideon. And Ulva? You look, uh, mystical and alluring."

"I'm posin'," Ulva said, not sounding like herself. "Hey, Gid, listen! OMG, the music's fire A.F. C'mon!"

She all but hauled a stuttering Gideon downstairs.

"Something just happened," Stanford said.

"I shore wish I knowed what!" Fiddleford said, scratching his head.

And bam! There it was.


	13. Chapter 13

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**13: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever . . . **

"Let me be certain I understand this correctly," Stanford said. "Whenever someone expresses a wish of any kind . . . ."

"Not jest somebody, Ford! It's gotta be somebody in the ding-dang house! I reckon the djinni sorta has tooken over the Mystery Shack, like a ghost possessin' a person, or when Bill Cipher went into your—oh, sorry. I still fergit sometimes."

"It's all right," Stanford said, though he was frowning. "I know what you mean. I suppose it's theoretically possible. So if I were to express a you-know-what that you-know-who would appear in human form, that would happen?"

ARTIE said, "Damn it, Ford, I'm a computer, not a psychic!"

"Well, I s'pose what you said's right," Fiddleford told Stanford. "Howsomever, we're prob'ly gonna want it to wipe out all these you-know-whats, but that could be dangerful, 'cause ain't no tellin' who's you-know-whatted fer what-all."

"Surely no one's wished for much yet."

Fiddleford gave him a long, pop-eyed glance. "Ford, old friend, these here is teenagers we's talking about!"

At that moment, upstairs in the women's restroom, Jane Woodley, fifteen and currently dressed as Ratgirl, said to her BFF Sammi Mumford, also fifteen (and dressed as Queen Chipmunk), "Sometimes I just wish they were bigger, you know?"

And tipped forward, almost falling flat on her, well—not face, we'll say.

"Whoa!" Sammi said. "I wish for that too!"

"Stop it!" yelped Jane, who'd gone from a 34 to a 42 in two short hops. Well, four, technically.

Up in Dipper's room, Fiddleford grabbed his head with both hands. "It done jest happened again!" he said. "Felt like a double-header that time!"

"All right, we have no choice," Stanford said. "I wish that the djinni causing this would manifest as a human being!"

"Whoa!" Fiddleford said, reeling. "That was a big'un. I don't reckon he liked it."

"Where is he?" Stanford asked.

"Well—you didn't rightly ask for it to manifest right _here_," Fiddleford said. "Somewheres in the house, though, I reckon."

"Let's go," Stanford said, jumping up from Dipper's desk chair. "This should be easy!"

They rushed down the stair and into the parlor.

Where about 120 kids were dancing with great abandon to D'J Fluff's "Don't Fear." In the corners various couples were expressing affection. Ford didn't know the term, but it was what Harry Potter's friends would call "snogging."

And dancers or snoggers, every single kid was in some colorful costume.

And Ford realized that not only had he failed to specify the location where the djinni would appear, he had not specified the gender or the age. "It could be anybody!" Ford yelled.

"Afore we gets in worser trouble," Fiddleford shouted in his ear, "we oughta do some more research! Quick, to the bat-cave!"

"To the what?" asked a blinking Stanford.

"Dunno why I said that. To the labs!"

But party guests milled in the corner of the gift shop near the vending machine, too. Stanley was there, and he grabbed Ford's shoulders. "Brainiac! Somethin' wonderful's happened! I got a pair of magic money pants! Have a few hundred!" He reached in his pocket and produced a wad of hundred-dollar bills, which he thrust into Stanford's hands. "More where that came from!"

Stanford rubbed his eyes. "Did you wish for that?" he asked.

"Huh? Louder!"

Stanford leaned close to his brother's ear and shouted the question. Stan nodded. "Oh, yeah! I just happened to, and all of a sudden—"

"Quick, I want a hundred singles!"

"You got 'em!" Stan pulled out a great handful of crumpled one-dollar bills and gave them to Ford.

"Kids!" Stanford bellowed. "We're about to set up the vending machine so you can have unlimited treats! Here—they're on us!" He tossed the wad of singles, which dissolved into its component bills as it flew, and the excited teens began scrambling. Ford entered the code, the vending machine swiveled, and he grabbed Stan's arm and pulled him into the passageway with him and Fiddleford.

The secret door swiveled closed, cutting off the uproar. "Hey!" Stan said, sounding hurt. "I worked hard for that money!"

"No, you didn't!" Ford said. "You just wished for it."

"That's hard, from a certain point of view!"

"Come on, Stanley. Somehow something got loose in the Shack, and we simply must find it before it causes too much mischief."

"Oy," said Stan.

"You can shore say _that_ again," Fiddleford told him. "Whatever it means."

ARTIE said, "I have been expecting you."

"All right," Stanford said. "Fiddleford and I have confirmed that some kind of djinni is loose in the Mystery Shack. It seems to grant whatever wish anyone makes anywhere in the house. Quick, what precautions should we take?"

"First: Do not make a wish yourselves, although you undoubtedly have already done that."

"Don't be a smarty-pants machine," Fiddleford warned.

"Second: Having made a wish, do not attempt to un-wish it. Djinn are notoriously tricky and will find some way to subvert your efforts if that is superhumanly possible."

"Got it," Ford said. "I was afraid of that."

"Third: If you can contain the djinni, the wishes may be automatically cancelled out. However, fourth: As long as the djinni is immaterial—"

"It ain't no more," Fiddleford said. "Ford wished it human, but we don't know which human that it become, and there's about a hundred teenagers upstairs a-whoopin' it up at the Summerween party."

After a moment, ARTIE said, "To be more accurate, I count one hundred ninety-five humans, two Manotaurs, a werewolf, and one that I cannot identify."

"That," said Stanford, "would be the djinni. Where is it exactly?"

"I can locate it only to within about ten meters. Wherever it is, it appears to be . . . dancing."

* * *

"I don't think I've met you," Pacifica said to the boy with the great abs and the head-to-toe red make-up and the bare chest and the abs and the blousy-legged pants and the open vest and the abs. "I'm Pacifica!"

"Call me Gene," the boy said, his voice touched with an exotic foreign accent, his brown eyes large and liquid. Hypnotic, almost.

* * *

"Hai! Mighty powers, unite!" Mabel exclaimed in the dining room, where nobody was yet snacking.

They did a quadruple fist-bump.

"Yes! Even though I am a teenager, I feel my mighty powers growing mightily!" exclaimed Teek.

"Ho! We also are energized!" Wendy said. "Now my boyfriend will kiss me!"

"Yes! The kiss will energize us even more!" said Dipper.

They pulled back their hoods.

Wendy blinked her green eyes at Dipper. They stood, puckered and facing each other and utterly confused. "Dude, what in the heck are we doing?"

"I . . . don't know," Dipper said. "But—can we still kiss?

* * *

"Go! Go! Go!" yelled a circle of teens, clapping rhythmically as Patrick Benning, a terminally clumsy kid whose nickname was "Pathetic Pat" around the school, suddenly displayed sexy footwork that Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Tony Manero would have killed for, were three of them not dead and the fourth fictional.

He had picked up Traci Tallberg and was making her look like a star dancer, too. And all he'd done was to sigh and whisper, "Man, I wish I could dance!"

Traci, who was a pretty great dancer herself but who now felt that she had jumped up two leagues at least, held onto him, laughing, and said, "I think I'm in love with you!"

"Hang on!" Pat said, whirling her, tossing her, retrieving her, and hoping she was sincere. He didn't have much time to worry about that. He was scared to death at what was happening to his legs and feet.

* * *

Pacifica and Gene had gone for a cup of punch to cool off. "Uh," Pacifica said, "I have a boyfriend. We're kind of going steady."

"Do you wish you did not?" Gene asked. His abs _gleamed._ Pacifica actually reached out and ran her palm over them.

But then she blinked. "No, I don't," she said with a trace of sadness. "I've had so many failed relationships with guys. No, I'm sticking with my guy. Sorry."

"Do not be," Gene said with a wide, white smile. "Is your guy here?"

"No, no, he's out of town. So I'm sort of solo tonight."

"Not any longer," Gene said. "Keep your going steady relationship with your guy. But tonight—here you are, and here I am, in the . . . flesh."

Flushing pink, Pacifica ladled out two cups of pink punch. And speaking of pink, Mabel, in her Pink Mighty Power Ranger costume—it looked great, much more authentic than Pacifica had first believed—crept past. Hanging upside-down on the ceiling, like a fly. How did she even do that?

Pacifica called up, "Hey, Mabel! This punch isn't spiked with Smile Dip, is it?"

Mabel did a ninja-drop, somersaulting twice before making a three-point landing and sticking it perfectly. "Ie! No, it is not! I wish!" And then she charged off into the parlor.

"Well, it's safe, anyway," Pacifica said, handing the punch to Gene. She clinked cups. "Here's to our tonight." She took a sip of strangely-flavored beverage.

"Thank you," Gene said, setting his untasted cup down next to the bowl. "But I never drink . . . punch."

* * *

"Assume the djinni is a janni," Ford said. "How do I spot him?"

"If it is a janni and it has manifested as a male human," ARTIE advised, "legends say that he will appear as a muscular young man with a bright red complexion. Bear in mind that janni can mate with humans, so he may be in company with a desirable human female."

"What if it done showed up as a woman?" asked Fiddleford.

"The same general principles apply. If it is a janni and it has manifested as a female human, the old tales say she will be very beautiful, with ample breasts, a seductive manner, and scanty clothing. She could mate with human males, so she may be in company with a muscular young human male."

"Still red, though?" Ford asked.

"Jann were born of fire, and their bright cherry-red complexions are part of their identity," ARTIE said.

"How can we reason with it?" asked Stanford.

"Difficult while it roams free. However, there is better than a fifty per cent chance that the entity was previously contained. If you locate the lamp, jar, bottle, ring, or other containment device and hold it while you communicate, it must obey you."

"That ain't hardly no help a-tall," Fiddleford muttered.

"Hey, machine, buddy," Stanley said, "if my Brainiac brother here defeats this thingy, what happens to my magic money pants?"

"In most old legends, a djinni cannot undo only one wish; all must be canceled. You would lose your pants."

"No!" Stanley wailed. "How about the money? Could I keep the money?"

ARTIE thought about it. "The products of a wish are distinct from the wish itself. The probability is that the money would not vanish."

"Come and help us find the djinni," Stanford said. "The more time that passes, the more urgent this becomes!"

"You and the codger go!" Stanley said. "Good luck, Mazel Tov, all that, but I got some diggin' to do!"

The two left him in the lab, frantically hauling fistfuls of money from both pants pockets and dumping them on the floor.

"Money," ARTIE warned Stan, "will not buy you happiness."

"So long as I can rent some, and buy me some new pants!" Stan shot back, tossing another couple of thousand to the growing pile around him.

* * *

"What's going on?" Dipper asked. He and Wendy, holding hands, had fought their way through a screaming, laughing crowd and onto the attic stairs. "Where are Mabel and Teek?"

"I—think they got ninja powers or some deal!" Wendy said. "These damn suits somehow possessed us!"

"I kinda remember," Dipper said. "Come on, let's get away from this pandemonium so we can talk!"

"Up in your room!" Wendy said.

But near the head of the stair, they paused. On the attic landing, Gideon was reading some girl's fortune in Tarot cards, trying to ignore Ulva, who was draped against him, kissing his cheek and caressing his neck. "OK, hon, let's see—your significator is the Page of Pentacles. Your question comes from the Seven of Cups, reversed, which is a big old steaming bowlful of confusion, so you're right conflicted."

The girl he was reading for, a dark sixteen-year-old named Ruby, murmured, "That's right so far. I just don't know whether Darren is the boy for me."

Gideon turned over another card. "Well, this here shows relationship. See, it's the Page of Swords, reversed. That would be your boyfriend, fair-haired guy, I'm thinkin' blue eyes?"

"That's him!" Ruby said. "Light brown hair and blue eyes. What about him?"

Gideon said, "I'm right sorry to say it, but he talks a big game but then don't follow through. That sound right?"

"It's what I'm most scared of," Ruby admitted. "What should I do?"

"OK, this next card signifies your best actions. Oopsie, it's Death."

"Death!"

"Calm down, sweetheart, it don't mean anybody actually dies. See, in Tarot, this is the card for change. So a change is comin'. Just what it is, well, let's finish up the reading. Now, this here next one tells you what the end result is gonna be if you embrace the change, all right?" Gideon hesitated, but then turned the final card. "Whoo! Look at that! It's the Lovers!"

"Is that good?"

"Oh, yeah, hon," Gideon said. "It means that your problem will resolve and you'll find yourself in a happy partnership. It may be the change is just that you got to clear the air with your boyfriend, and then you two will be happy, or it may be you just got to woman up and tell him he can't make a fool outa you, and you'll find somebody else nice. Whichever, I wish you happiness."

Ruby beamed. "I feel a whole lot better already! Thank you! I'll send the next one up!"

Dipper and Wendy had waited on the stairs, but they'd heard it all. They hurried up onto the landing. Gideon was holding Ulva, who was snuggling him. "Let's go make out," she said, loud enough for them to here.

"Well, look-a here!" Gideon said, coughing. "Our next sitters are Dipper and Wendy!"

"No, just passing through," Dipper said. "Carry on!"

He practically dragged Wendy into his room. "Let's get out of these clothes!" he said.

"Dip! Now's not the—oh, I see."

He tossed her the slacks and white shirt she'd changed from while he peeled the yellow Mighty Powerful Ranger leotard off. "What's up with Ulva?" he asked.

"Dunno, like a spell's over her. How'd Gideon do that trick with the candle?"

"What trick?" Dipper drew on a pair of jeans and the same tee shirt he'd worn that day.

Wendy was buttoning her shirt. "Just as he finished up his phony reading, the top candle lit up, and then they all did. Trick candle?"

"I don't know," Dipper said. "We'd better go see if we can find Grunkle Ford. He'll know what to do!"

They went out onto the landing, averting their eyes—Ulva was all over Gideon, and the two were kissing passionately.

A girl was coming up the stair. Wendy yelled over her shoulder, "Gideon! You've got a customer!"

From above, Gideon called back a muffled, "Thanks!"

Again, Dipper said, "Grunkle Ford will know what to do!"

In the parlor, where the music pounded even louder and kids gyrated, laughed, and smooched and fondled each other, Ford and Fiddleford stood on the edge of what looked like the early stages of a Roman debauch.

"Fiddleford," groaned Stanford, "I just don't know what to do!"


	14. Chapter 14

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**14: Party Hearty**

Wendy and Dipper fought their way downstairs and to the parlor, where they stepped into full-blown pandemonium. A cluster of teens—dozens of them—had jammed together in a clump and danced wildly, like one creature with fifty legs, to some tune no one could even hear—only the vibrating thumps of the bass, which was turned up at least to eleven.

Laughter and shrieks from couples and threesomes and quartets milling all through the rest of the Shack completely drowned out the melody. "—?" yelled Wendy. Dipper cupped his hand behind his ear, and she shouted again, so loud that her face turned red. He could barely hear her tone, but not the words.

Dipper dragged Wendy by the hand out the side door of the Shack. "What?" he yelled, his ears still ringing.

"I asked what the heck's going on!" she yelled back. "Look out!"

At first Dipper thought some monstrous centipede was creeping around the Shack—but then realized it was a Conga line of teens, leader on hands and knees, second in line hugging her waist, next in line hugging hers, and so on—a dozen kids, laughing crazily as they knee-walked, their line snaking through the dewy grass. They turned around the corner and toward the parking lot. Dipper asked, "Has everybody taken crazy pills? That's no party game—" Wendy grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. "What—?"

"Whoa, look back there!"

Dipper saw a glare and they ran to the Museum entrance, staring toward the woods, where yellow light lit up part of the forest. Dipper caught the sharp reek of burning pine. "Oh, my gosh!"

A fire blazed in the bonfire clearing—a dangerously large one, with red-streaked smoke roiling upward from it. Wendy said, "Come on!"

The two of them sprinted back past the Bottomless Pit, down the trail, and skidded to a halt—

Twenty or thirty partiers were sweating in the yellow glare of a fire built of all the wood—a whole week's supply—piled as high as Dipper's head. He could see that the branches of the trees nearest the clearing had already withered and some were beginning to smolder.

Pacifica stood on a log and seemed to be telling a story: "And then he saw a –GHOST!" She laughed insanely. "There's the word again! Everybody kiss somebody, and take off one article of their clothing!" She shed her mask and tossed it into the fire.

"The hose!" Dipper said. "Wendy, try to get them away from the fire!"

He sprinted back to the Shack, grabbed the two-hundred-foot hose, turned on the water, and dragged its increasingly heavy weight back toward the threatening blaze, the reel creaking behind him.

The hose tautened and yanked him up short as he neared the Bottomless Pit, still a long way from the glade.

Somebody—a guy, he didn't know who, dressed as a devil or something, tapped him on the shoulder and pleasantly said, "Don't you wish this hose was long enough to reach the fire?"

"Yes!" Dipper said.

The guy reached out and tugged on the hose, then let go. "Try it, I think it was just snagged."

Dipper yanked and fell down. Huh. He scrambled to his feet, looped the hose over his shoulder, and leaned into it, hustling toward the fire. And the hose, miraculously, reached—unless, he thought in a panic, it had broken or come loose from the faucet—

But when he twisted the nozzle, a powerful stream of water jetted out.

The kids stood on the path, oohing and ahhing at the flames. Some of them were down to underwear. Pacifica at least still had the slip and shoes from her princess costume, though her hair was all tangled.

"I got everybody away," Wendy said. "Put it out if you can!"

Dipper focused the stream of water on the out-of-control campfire. Dense steam billowed and hissed. For minutes, the water didn't seem to matter—the fire had too great a head start.

But then, little by little, areas of the blazing mound darkened as the thick steam gushed. A dirty snow began to fall, ashes still warm, small drops of water smelling of smoke. "Get the trees, too!" Wendy yelled, pointing upward.

He leaned back and directed the stream toward the shriveled, smoking branches until everything had been soaked. Wendy took the hose from him and advanced toward the pile of embers, red still showing through the blackened ashes. She circled to the far side, spraying wherever fire gleamed.

"I think you got it," Dipper said after a while. The surface of the campfire now lay dark and sodden, though it still steamed. At least no orange embers showed. Dipper looked back at the trail to the Shack, now invisible in the night—the moonless sky gave little light. He didn't have his flashlight, but he took out his phone from his jeans pocket and used that. Its feeble glow showed a vacant Mystery Trail. "Wait, where did they all go?"

"Down to the creek, I think," Wendy said. "While you were fighting the main fire, Pacifica wanted them all to go skinny-dipping."

"But the creek's only about two feet deep!" Dipper said.

"Didn't seem to matter. I, uh, don't think swimming was really the goal."

"Great," Dipper groaned. "Let's get back to the Shack before somebody burns that down! We have to find Grunkle Ford!"

He twisted the nozzle, shutting off the water, and they dragged the hose with them. Halfway back, Wendy said, "How'd this thing even reach? It's like a quarter mile from the Bottomless Pit to the bonfire glade, and this hose isn't half that long!"

The curious thing was—it wasn't. Clearly, the hose shrank as they got closer to the house. In their hurry they didn't bother to reel it up, but left it in loops on the ground, shoved beneath the porch. Dipper winced as he turned off the faucet. The music still throbbed inside the Shack at skull-throbbing volume. Kids sat around on the lawn and porch, single ones and groups of two or three—not kissing and hugging, but murmuring in strange dreamy voices and giggling and pointing up at the stars.

"Are they all drunk?" Wendy asked.

"Maybe. Or on something," Dipper said. "They remind me of Mabel that time in the convenience store—"

The two of them stared at each other. Both said, "Smile Dip!" at the same moment.

Dipper groaned. "Oh, no. Mabel knows better!"

Inside, they didn't see either Mabel or Teek, but the Shack still hosted the dancing clump of kids, along with paired-off teens hugging and kissing—all over the place. They almost had to fight their way back upstairs.

"Let's go down," they heard Ulva plead. "Please! I want to party hardy, Gideon!"

They found Gideon without his turban, which lay like an empty bird nest near the card table. Ulva was running her fingers through his hair. "Lord help me now!" Gideon said as they came onto the landing. "Somethin's bad wrong with Ulva!"

"Bring her into my room," Dipper said. He had to chase out two half-dressed girls who had been kissing each other, but Gideon got Ulva inside.

"Calm down, girl," Wendy said as Ulva climbed on Gideon, wrapping arms and legs around him.

She had playfully sunk her teeth into his shoulder. "Gonna eat him up," she said in a muffled voice.

Dipper took a deep breath. "I just wish Ulva would go to sleep and wake up normal."

Gideon staggered under Ulva's sudden dead weight as she went limp. Holding her up, he wailed, "She passed out! Y'all help me!"

They lifted Ulva onto the bed, and Wendy adjusted her costume, which had fallen open in a revealing way, and covered her with a sheet. Sternly, she said, "Gideon, you stay with her and don't let anybody come in. And you be a gentleman!"

"I will. I swear!" Gideon said, pulling a chair up beside the bed and taking Ulva's hand. "Oh, my poor little girl! Is she sick, or—"

"Magic," Dipper said. "I hope what I said helped, but—I have to find my Grunkle Ford!"

He set the attic door to lock. On the landing, Wendy tapped his shoulder and pointed. One candle in the row of bottles burned brightly.

"Come on," Dipper said, and again he and Wendy ran the obstacle course of teen couples sitting on the steps. Oddly, the space right around the vending machine—which had been completely emptied of snacks and candy bars—was clear, and no one seemed to notice as Dipper punched in the code. The din of the music and laughter muted as the secret door closed behind him and Wendy, and they hurried downstairs to the lab.

They found Stanley on the second level, giggling insanely and standing knee-deep in a pile of U.S. currency. "Look! It just keeps comin'!" he told them, yanking handfuls of fifties and hundreds from his pants pockets. "Look at it! Ain't it gorgeous?"

"Grunkle Stan, where's Grunkle Ford?" Dipper asked.

Stan didn't even slow down. "Sixer? Dunno. He and McGucket were both here, but they're looking for a jingle or something. Wonder if I could just get hundreds? Let me try!" He pulled out a wad of bills and yelled, "Yes!"

Wendy put her hand on Dipper's shoulder. "I wish Stanford Pines would come here as soon as he could," she said quietly. "Sorry, man, I know it's risky, but—"

They heard the noise of the party increase and then fade again. A disheveled Stanford came in, breathing hard. "This is turning into a riot!" he said. "Oh, hello, Mason, Wendy. You two don't seem to be affected—or _are_ you?"

"I think we're OK," Dipper said. "But anytime anybody makes a wish—"

"I know, I know!" Ford said. "But don't! I don't know what the parameters are. Wishes tend to be selfish, and the selfishness is growing and mutating and—it's out of control. If I could only find the container—"

"What container?" Dipper asked.

"The djinni. If my conjecture is valid, somewhere in the house there's an enchanted lamp or jug or—"

"Bottle!" Wendy said. Dipper stared at her. "Dude, remember those funky brass bottles that Mabel found? One of them, the candle always lights but never burns down—remember when Gideon was doing his psychic bit, and then after you made that wish for Ulva?"

"Brass bottle?" Ford asked. "Um—could it have been bronze?"

Wendy shrugged. "Bronze, brass, whatever, it's up on the landing!"

"Come on! If that's what I'm searching for, we may be able to put an end to this madness before it spreads further!"

"Just gimme another hour!" Stan said. The snowdrift of cash around him steadily grew.

"Can't, Stanley!" Ford said. "Come on, Wendy, Mason!"

They saw Fiddleford sitting on the lowest step, a goofy smile on his face and a cluster of teens sitting on the floor, looking up at him as he explained, "See, if we were made of cellophane we could all—"

"You, too?" Ford asked, sounding tragic.

Dipper stooped and picked up an empty plastic cup next to McGucket. He sniffed it. "Smile Dip," he said. "He'll come out of it in time. What was Mabel even thinking?"

The steps had become even more crowded, and they had to weave their way up. "There they are, Dr. P.!" Wendy said. "The one in the middle is the one that lit up when Gideon said something about a wish! And then again when Dipper did."

Ford grabbed it. Dipper took out his key and unlocked his bedroom door. Gideon sprang up from his chair. "Stand back! I won't let y'all hurt—oh, it's you!"

Ford, Wendy, and Dipper got through the door, Dipper leaned back against it and locked it again. On the bed, a smiling Ulva slept peacefully beneath the sheet.

"OK," Dipper said. "Gideon, Ford thinks he knows what's happening. We have the bottle—what now?"

"There's probably a spell of summoning," Stanford said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "If I knew the language of the djinni's homeland—"

"Oh, give that thing to me," Wendy said in a burst of impatience. She took the bottle and said, "Listen up! Genie, if this is your bottle, you come here right now, and no nonsense! You hear me!"

The burst of ruddy light and the rolling clouds of steam were like those from the doused massive campfire. As the steam cleared, a tall, bright-red, mostly naked guy appeared standing close beside Wendy.

"I hear," he said, his red eyes taking in Wendy from foot to red hair and back down again. He licked his lips. "And I obey."

His voice was like the purr of a lascivious tomcat. Dipper hated him already.

* * *

To be continued


	15. Chapter 15

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**15: Chess with a Squid**

"Get away from me," Wendy said, shoving the red guy.

"Aw, come on," he said. "You know what they say: Once you try magic, going back's tragic."

"Yeah, next time try a line that's not as old as the Pyramids," Wendy said. "Don't hit him, Dipper, I got this."

The startled janni whipped his head around to see what Dipper was doing—nothing—and put himself in an excellent position for a left hook, which Wendy delivered.

The creature then stepped away from her. "Foolish girl, you cannot hurt an immortal djinni with physical violence!" But he rubbed his face. "However, if you could—ow!"

"You see what I hold," Ford said, brandishing the bronze bottle.

"Oh, sure, baby, home sweet home. But I don't do that master bit, OK?"

"Tell another one," Wendy suggested. "All alone in that bottle for centuries on end, I bet you got lots of time for master bitting."

"Look," Ford said, "I intend to put you back in this bottle, but only after you've reversed all the wishes you've granted today."

The janni grinned. "Tough luck, Mister. You have to unwish them." Before Ford could speak, he raised a red finger. "Nah-ah-ah! I know what you're thinking, and the answer is _waw-nun,_ No. No group deals. You must individually and exactly wish the opposite of each and every wish."

"That's impossible!" Stanford said. "There's no earthly way for me to know every wish you granted. Unless I wish to—"

The janni laughed out loud. "Close, but no hookah! You _could_ wish to know all the wishes that have been wished, but the future is unwritten, and even I do not know what wishes _will _be wished. For instance, while I was saying that, I just granted three more wishes. By the way, Mabel now has web-slinging powers."

"Grunkle Ford," Dipper said, "I've got a feeling that as the night goes on, the wishes will grow exponentially. The kids are bound to realize that their wishes are coming true."

"I wished a couple myself," Gideon said. "And poor Ulva wished something I know good and well she don't really want! What do you get out of doin' people dirty anyways, you—Gene?"

"Not Eugene," the janni said, the timbre of his voice changing. "Please, y'all, that's too lah-di-dah for little old me. I'm just plain old Gene, everybody's friend."

"Don't you dare to start talkin' like me!" Gideon exploded, his face nearly as red as Gene's. "Don't you dare mock me, you—you evil critter!" He balled his fist. "I wish you wouldn't grant no more wishes to anybody under the age of fifty until this whole big old mess gets sorted out!"

"Aw," Gene said in his normal voice. "However—granted. Lots of kids are going to be so disappointed. Especially the ones out in that cold creek without even bathing suits."

"Pacifica," Dipper said. "And all the kids downstairs going crazy—we've got to think of something."

Gene said to Wendy, "So he's your man, hm? Wouldn't you like him a little taller?"

"No!" she snapped. "And I'm not fifty, either, so forget about it!"

"Habit," he said. "I do a lot of size wishes. There's a very popular girl downstairs right now that could vouch for that."

"This is all some kind of warped game to you, isn't it?" Ford asked. "Toying with people, corrupting their wishes—"

"Now, now, Professor," Gene said, his voice positively stuffy. "I am not one of those bait-and-switch boys—you wish to live for a million years and find yourself sentenced to life imprisonment! You wish for a fortune in sunken treasure, and I send you to it, nine thousand feet under the sea's surface, in your street clothes! Never did a thing like that in my life! I'm in this gig for the fun of it. Hey, you spend a few hundred years in a bottle, you'd want to bust out a little when you got some time out, too! Speaking of which—"

Dipper didn't know how it was done. The janni did not morph, transition, or change, exactly—one moment he was male, and the next instant, without the least flicker, without any roiling smoke, flashes of light, or special effects, he was an extremely busty girl, long black hair tumbling down over her shoulders, bare minimum of clothing, accent on the bare—basically the narrow open vest and a thong—her eyes huge and golden, her lips pouty. "Hey, Dipper," the janni said, its suddenly throaty voice now that of a seductive woman, "How committed are you to Miss Lightweight Champ here? Interested in a little fling?"

"Ugh, no!" Dipper said.

"My sort can select its gender at will, and we can indulge ourselves in ways mortals only dream of, dear. I can offer you things that she can't," the janni said. She sprouted a cliché tail—long and snaky and ending in a sort of heart-shaped spear point. She coiled it around his wrist. "Intriguing, no? Or if you want variety—" The tail vanished and she transformed into an image of Mabel, still just as under-dressed, still bright red—"you and me could get freaky!"

"Immortal or not," Wendy snarled, "in about two seconds I'm gonna kill you!"

"Wait, let's not waste time squabbling. Do you have a true form?" Stanford asked.

"Yes, of course, when I care to manifest," she said.

"Is it large?"

"Mm, bit larger than this house."

"Change to a version of it no larger than I am."

"That's not a wish."

"No, but you're not having any fun like this."

Genie-Mabel giggled in a most Mabel-like way. "That's what you think. We could make our own fun, you know. So you're these kids' uncle? Ever heard the word Pinecest?"

"Not interested," Ford said. "We could get through this a lot faster if you'd do as I suggest."

"OK already." Again without any transition, the janni changed—now it looked humanoid, not human. Still red, about the same height and girth of Ford, with a face—glowing orange eyes, a wide mouth—and muscular arms, but the rest of it was, more or less, a dust devil—orange-red, shifting while maintaining the same general form, whirling constantly, tailing down to a wispy point, no legs at all. "Do you like this better? Does not the sight of my true form fill you with fear? Drive you to insanity?"

The voice had become a rough, harsh whisper, like a gale whipping across a sandy dune. Ford shook his head. "Actually, no, it doesn't. I like to see things as they are, and after some of the monstrosities I've met, you are not that terrifying."

"You should see me when I'm three hundred feet tall and rolling through the desert, striding over the rolling dunes on legs made of lightning," the janni said with what might have been a smile. It was hard to tell on that moving, shifting face.

"Looking that-a-way, are you still Gene?" Gideon asked.

"If you wish. You could not pronounce my true name."

"Really?" Ford asked. "What is it?"

With a sigh, the genie said something that, to Dipper, sounded like "Kh'askhset-t'skh-a-rosha k'lk."

Ford said it precisely the same way.

The janni blinked those glowing eyes. "I thought it beyond mortal tongue! You can pronounce the ancient language of forgotten Khusk?"

"I've studied it a little," Ford said. "So your name is 'Despair of Mortals, Terror of the Desert'?"

"I was named for my mother's father," the janni said. "To tell you the truth, I never felt it suited me."

"Mind if we call you Terry?" Wendy asked sarcastically.

The eyes blinked again. "What? Oh—as you call the one named Mason the Dipper? A nick of a name?"

"Nickname," said Dipper. "Yes. It's your real name, but changed for something—"

"More stylish," Ford put in hurriedly. "If you'd like, we could put in part of 'despair,' too. How about Deterry?"

"We could call you just any old thing," Gideon pointed out. "Givin' you a nickname is friendly-like."

For a moment the living dust devil swelled. "I do not need human friends!"

"I suppose you got hundreds of genie friends," Wendy said.

"Yes! Well—I could if I wanted to. Hey, you try staying away from home for a millennium or two, then see what kind of friends you'd have back where you came from!"

"Everyone needs friends," Dipper said. "Puny human or not."

Deterry throbbed with sandy laughter. "Not me! I see just what you're doing—trying to trick me into behaving like a mortal, trying to win my trust. You can't do that with Kh'askhset-t'skh-a-rosha k'lk! I'm genre-savvy, I am!"

"You know the ropes, huh?" Gideon asked. "Look-a here, you windbag! These are good people you're messin' with. I was, 'scuse the language, a hellion there for a good many years, but I learnt me a lesson, and that was that everybody needs somebody! Get over the stupid notion that somebody's trying to trick you and just listen!"

"Windbag," the janni said. "I sort of like that one."

Wendy said, "Yeah, well, you can't be Windy, 'cause that sounds too much like me."

And suddenly the dust devil was an exact likeness of Wendy—well, not exact, a lot bustier, and still in the skimpy clothes and still with cherry-red skin. But the voice was the same—just like the voice of that Wendy made of bugs that he had met in Mabel Land. "Dipper, I could give you a night you'd remember!"

"I'm warning you!" Wendy roared. "You might not know it, but I got Corduroy powers!"

The janni seemed to understand the import, if not the exact meaning, of the phrase. "Oh, I'm just teasing," she said. "All alone in a bottle, I get so horny. See?" And sure enough, little curved devil horns erupted from her forehead.

"Go back to your true, reduced form," Ford said. "This is getting us nowhere. What can we offer you to cancel all the wishes, go away, and leave us alone?"

"Oh, goody, let me see," Deterry said, collapsing back to his whirlwind form. "Hmm, I'm a supernatural being who can bestow unlimited wealth and happiness, what do I need? A new tie? Nahhh."

Gideon said, "He's just playin' with us! This is like tryin' to play chess with—with a—with a doggone squid!"

"A lot of arms doesn't mean a lot of brains," Dipper said.

"What does that even mean?" Deterry asked him.

"You figure it out," Dipper said, having suddenly decided that he didn't have the least idea what it meant himself. "By the way, where's Mabel right now?"

"With her ninja boyfriend. Away up high, where they can see the whole town. She's got him all wrapped up in a web cocoon. Confidentially, he likes it."

"Shut up!" Wendy said. "Dr. P, come up with something, or I swear I'm gonna see what an axe can do with this jerk."

"No mortal axe can harm me," Deterry said haughtily.

Wendy drew a gleaming axe, edged with a shimmering phantasmic blue glow. "This is no mortal axe!" she said with a fierce grin.

Gingerly, Deterry tested it with a finger. He jerked away from the axe, his finger bleeding sand. "You have a point," he conceded. "Or an edge."

Dipper said, "Grunkle Ford, I know one thing we could give him that he can't get any other way."

"Ooh, doo tell," Deterry said in that kind of sneering nasty voice you've heard before, probably in high school.

"The bottle," Dipper said.

A silence fell as everyone, janni and human, studied a mental chessboard that suddenly looked quite different.

"That would be terribly dangerous," Ford said. "No."

"I . . . can't transport the bottle," Deterry admitted. "I can only go inside it. I cannot touch or move it by any natural or supernatural means. Genie laws. But—intriguing idea, Dipper. I can see that Mabel got the good looks in the family. You got the ugly birthmark."

Ignoring that, Dipper asked, "What if we give you the next best thing? Your freedom."

The janni winced. "Oh, that would be—impossible. Much as I'd like it. No. The King of the Djinn sentenced me to exile in that accursed bottle a thousand—what year is this?"

"It's 2017," Dipper said.

"Or in the Arabic calendar, 1438," Ford said. "Or the 3,351st year since the accession of King Tutankhamun."

"I _have_ lost track," Deterry said. "Whoa. That means last time I was in the lamp for—huh. _More_ than a thousand years! Good thing I pick up on local culture quickly."

"If I order you to go back in the bottle," Ford said, "then—"

"I'd have to go," Deterry said. But he was grinning. "Leaving about a hundred and twelve wishes still wished and a big mess to clean up. Plus, nobody would go back to the way they were. I'd call this a Saharan standoff."

Ford waggled the bottle, "You know, I could take this thing to Antarctica, pay for an enormously deep borehole in glacial ice, drop it in, and leave you there for a geologic age."

"So what?" Deterry said smugly. "Time means nothing to me. Sooner or later, the bottle would work its way out."

"Put his little old bottle in a goldang rocket an' shoot it into the heart of the sun!" Gideon suggested.

"That would inconvenience me," Deterry admitted. "But then your little wolfy girlfriend wouldn't ever wake up."

Dipper glanced at Ford, whose expression showed how frustrated he was getting. "I think I have a way out," he said.

"Oh, goody," said Deterry with an infuriating sneer. "I can't wait to hear this."

"Shut up, you!" Wendy said, raising her axe so fast that Deterry flinched. "Dipper, man, you got the floor. Go ahead."

Dipper took a deep breath.


	16. Chapter 16

**Inhuman Nature**

**(June 19-23, 2017)**

* * *

**16: Bargaining Fool**

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines: **_At least—well, I'll call him—no, I'll still call it Gene, but its idea of gender and personal identity are not any that I'm familiar with—at least Gene heard me out._

"_So," he said, "if I cancel out the wishes—by the way, I didn't mention the ones over at the Teen Center—"_

"_What?" Grunkle Ford asked. "You were restricted to this house—"_

"_Not so much," Gene said with an evil grin. "When your brother realized he had his pair of magic money pants, first he told some people at the dance there, and then he rushed here to empty his pockets. He had a hundred and eleven guests there, plus the concession operators, plus the band. Because he'd made a wish here and realized over there that it had been granted, and he told them, the connection was made and I obliged a great many of them. All in fact. Long story short, everybody there's currently sixteen years old!"_

"_Oy!" said Grunkle Ford, the first time, I think, I'd ever heard him use the expression._

"_Don't worry, they're having a great time," Gene said. "But back to business: If I understand your nephew here—hey, bud, would you like me to take off that embarrassing birthmark?"_

"_Touch it and die!" Wendy said, gripping the axe given to her by her ancestor, the ghost I fought at Northwest Manor—heck, just reference my copy of Journal 3, the story's there._

_Her jumping to the defense of my birthmark made me feel kind of funny, but it shouldn't have. I mean, all my life people have teased me about the weird shape on my forehead. Except Mabel, and Mom, and Wendy. Mabel always thought it was "cute" and even once said she wished she had one, maybe a shooting star or comet. Mom started calling me "Dipper" because she said I should treasure the things that made me special. And Wendy—I showed it to her of my own free will once, and she took it right in stride. Just knowing that she didn't want me changed made me feel, well, pretty good._

"_No, thanks," I told Gene. "But come on—Grunkle Ford will wish you back to your homeland, wherever that is, and he'll wish the bottle along with you."_

"_Still can't touch it," Gene said._

_Grunkle Stan thought for a second. "I'll give you a backpack! Carry it in that, and when you get home—hide it or destroy it or do whatever you want with it. But you'll be free!"_

"_And I can finally get my fondest wish," Gene said._

"_What's that?" Gideon asked, sounding suspicious._

_With big puppy-dog eyes, Gene clasped his clawed hands and said, "Oh, if I could have my wish, I'd see the whole world aflame and humanity screaming as it burned!"_

_Everybody gasped, including me, and he cracked up. "Kidding! Ha! You should see your faces. You guys are suckers, you know that? Seriously, where would I be without humans to play with now and then? But—" This time his eyes looked distant and dreamy—"to roll along the desert in a mile-wide cloud, raising the dust to half that distance above the ground! To wake the lightning and laugh as it strides with me! And to see others like me—sweet T'kha-lalah-a'krit, whose thighs are like pillars of red marble! My old friend Klarkash'tn, whose nose I plan to break when we meet again! So many others!"_

"_Yes, yes, homesickness, nostalgia, and so on," Grunkle Ford said impatiently. "But will you take the deal?"_

"_Let's iron out a few details," Gene said. _

_He was starting to remind me very strongly of Bill Cipher. Not in a good way._

* * *

At times during the negotiations, the janni tried to be ingratiating. At times he either was, or pretended to be, furious. Once he even threatened, taking on the form of the Grim Reaper—but none of them, not even Gideon, was intimidated. They had all seen worse during Weirdmageddon. Finally the charm of give-and-take started to wear thin, and in the end, in less than half an hour they made the big push to finalize the deal.

It was midnight, or close enough, when they finished with those pesky details. Briefly, the terms were:

I-Grunkle Ford would wish first for cancellation of all the wishes that had been made since Gene had emerged from his bottle.

II-Gene agreed that the wishes would vanish, but refused to take responsibility for lingering effects or clean-up. That was on the humans.

III-Ford agreed, with the proviso that no one whose wish was canceled would remember the events of the evening as anything more than a vivid dream and would be persuaded that the party had been highly enjoyable. After some back-and-forth argument, Gene consented to this.

IV-Ford made an exception of the people in this room; Gideon, Dipper, Wendy, and he would have a complete memory of what had transpired, just in case another genie should turn up in the future. Ulva, however, would forget her wish and would think of it as a strange dream. Gene agreed if they let him take one packet of Smile Dip back home when he went. They squabbled, but Mabel had nearly a whole case of the stuff, and Dipper knew where she hid it, so in the end they agreed.

V-Then Ford would wish Gene back to the vast desert where once the human civilization of Khusk had watched with interest while the Egyptians tried to figure out how to stack up one stone block atop another. They themselves had quite sophisticated tombs and temples constructed of practically imperishable flint. All of them had long since eroded to sand. Anyway, Kh'askhset-t'skh-a-rosha k'lk (who had decided to ask all of his friends and family to call him "Deterry" from then on) would be wished back to that desolate countryside, together with his bottle and one packet of Smile Dip in a knapsack on his back. Gene, or Deterry, or whatever he called himself, promised that he would seek no retribution or ever further bother anyone affected by the wishes made in Gravity Falls that night.

VI-However, Ford insisted that first the janni would cancel the wishes, and he reserved one wish should Kh'askhset-t'skh-a-rosha k'lk not hold up that end of the bargain. "Actually," Ford said, "it wouldn't be a wish so much as a curse. If you fail to uphold your end, you will find yourself upon arriving back in your homeland also back in your bottle—and the one who finds it will not be a human, but your worst enemy among the djinn."

The janni had winced. "_Touché_," he muttered.

And a codicil:

VII-Ford agreed that, once Kh'askhset-t'skh-a-rosha k'lk had returned to Khusk, or its environs, he would be free to pursue his own interest and any romantic entanglement that offered, providing no magic, hypnotism, mind control, deception, bribery, force, trickery, jiggery-pokery, folderol, hoodwinkery, hanky-panky, Smile Dippery, or other forms of blandishment or coercion were involved. "Don't need anything but my personality," Kh'askhset-t'skh-a-rosha k'lk said in a wickedly suggestive tone.

"Maybe he can get a transplant for that," Wendy whispered to Dipper.

Then—as noted, right about midnight—Ford made a complex series of interlinked wishes. The janni grinned and said, "Help me into this thing." Dipper and Gideon showed him how to get into a backpack—one of Ford's old expedition backpacks, very well made—and then they slipped the bottle and envelope of Smile Dip into the pack and snapped and securely zipped it.

"You're all set," Dipper said.

"I'd just like to say," began Kh'askhset-t'skh-a-rosha k'lk with a wink at Wendy.

She cocked the axe. "Go."

"—I'm gone!" said the janni. "Wishes granted!" He snapped his fingers and vanished.

Instantly Ulva sat up in bed, discovered that her costume was a little disarrayed, and clutched the sheet around her. "Gideon! What has happened? Why here in the bed am I? Did I change?"

Gideon took her hand. "No, sweetheart, it got a little hot and stuffy, and you kinda fainted a little, that's all. You're fine."

"I feel much tired," she said, rubbing her eyes.

"It's probably time," Ford said, "for this party to end."

* * *

Strange thing—though the enchantments had definitely ended, the effects of Smile Dip lingered. However, they passed from a short time of intense solitary hallucinations, each kid probably flying on his or her own version of an Aoshima, ranging from dragon to alicorn to (in one case) a gigantic cigarette-smoking penguin, dazzled by colors that only bees, art students, and Mabel could see, to a condition of not wanting to eat, drink, or do anything ever again and from that to woozy slumber.

They could be revived enough to remember where they lived. Ford and Stan—after Stan had used a push broom to gather all the droppings from the pockets of his no-longer-magic money pants—piled them into the tram and drove them home, while Wendy and Dipper went looking for those still missing. They used the golf cart to haul out a huge stack of towels (pilfered from the supply room of the public pool—Wendy had never surrendered the key she got during her brief stint as lifeguard) and trundled as far as they could down the Mystery Trail.

They took towels to the skinny-dippers, most of whom were not truly skinny—Pacifica still had her fancy princess underwear on, though she'd lost the bra—and got them all wrapped up. "What happened?" Pacifica moaned.

"We think somebody spiked the punch," Wendy said. "I can take five of you. The rest, look for your costumes. Dipper's got some flashlights, and he'll help."

Dipper retrieved most of Pacifica's costume—he couldn't find the bra, though about a week later it turned up when a Gnome wore it into the Shack. A male Gnome. He thought it was a fancy headdress. The other groaning kids got bits and pieces of clothes from the banks of the creek, and in the end, most of them were decently covered, if not very well dressed.

Though Pacifica complained—"I have an absolute blinding headache!"—once she was dressed, Wendy organized her and a dozen other survivors into a clean-up squad, and they started putting the Shack back in order—the next day was a work day, after all. Dipper's phone rang—Mabel's ring tone, thank God—and he said, "Sis! Where are you?"

"I'm on top of the water tower!" Mabel said, her voice terrified. "I'm hanging on to this weird ropy sticky stuff. Help!"

"Is Teek with you?"

"He's here, but he's kinda wrapped up. Brobro, come help me! I'm afraid to open my eyes!"

Dipper drove his Land Runner to the rescue. Fortunately, heights did not bother him. What did bother him was that Mabel and Teek were not on the platform of the water tower. No, they were all the way up on the roof. With a knife, Dipper freed Teek from a cocoon of spider web about the size of quarter-inch rope. It was irritatingly sticky, though, like something made of braided cotton candy.

"Thanks," Teek said. "I don't remember how we got up here! Mabel, are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right!" she said. She lay on the steep roof on her stomach, up at the pinnacle, desperately clutching the lightning rod that ended in a brass globe. "Get me down!"

That took some doing. In the end, Dipper left Teek—who was OK with heights—up there with his arm around Mabel while he drove back to the Shack for some rope. Soos and his family had returned, and they were joining in the clean-up. On his way back, Dipper saw that cars were leaving the Teen Center, probably driven by some exhausted adults. Being sixteen for half a night takes a lot out of someone, and he should know.

With a safety line rigged and Teek and Dipper helping her, Mabel slipped down the steep conical roof, over the edge—that was the toughest bit—and onto the metal ladder that led up to the access panel. Then down to the platform, and, very gingerly, with Teek going first and guiding her feet, down the ladder to the ground.

"Where's your car?" Dipper asked her.

She didn't remember.

But Teek said, "It's . . . with mine, up in the Shack parking lot? Maybe? I kind of think we . . . walked here? Or did we swing through the trees, like ninjas?"

"I messed up, didn't I?" Mabel moaned.

Teek comforted her in the back seat while Dipper drove them back to the Shack.

Where a surprise met them. A bunch of six laughing kids were leaving—the Shack was back in passable order—and they clustered around Mabel. "Great party!" "Thanks, Mabel—best Summerween ever!" "We had a fantastic time!"

"You're welcome!" Mabel said, lighting up. When they had gone, she added, "Ha! Even unconscious, I throw a great party!"

She and Teek kissed goodnight, Dipper accompanied her to her room to tuck her in—oops, Tripper was anxiously waiting, and Dipper told Mabel to get in bed while the dog went out to do his duty. Which, Dipper observed in the light from the porch, he did in the normal doggy fashion.

"Did you like being a human?" Dipper asked him as the relieved pup trotted back. Tripper paused, looked at Dipper, and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, it can be rough," Dipper agreed.

Up in his room, he found Wendy making up the bed. "Changing the sheets," she explained. "They were due, anyhow. That was a ride, huh?"

"Yeah," he said. "I guess in Gravity Falls, our genies are different."

"I still kinda wish I'd punched him one more time for luck," Wendy said. "He reminds me of certain high-school jocks. There you go." She turned around and hugged him, her hands on his butt. "You know what? I think maybe ol' Gene did something to you. If I'm not mistaken, you're my height exactly now."

He was looking into her green eyes.

"If it was magic," he said, "it won't last."

"We'll see in the morning, I guess," she told him before they kissed.

* * *

Down in the lab, a weary Stanford helped Stanley pick up bushels—literally bushels—of American currency. Fiddleford, though still a bit woozy from Smile Dip, had cobbled up a machine that counted and neatly stacked and wrapped the bills. They were all hundreds and fifties, and the amount constantly increased.

"You're a millionaire at least twice over, and maybe more," Ford said as he used his toe to drag two hundred and fifty dollars from under a bookcase. "Congratulations. I suppose you're going to take this to Las Vegas?"

"Got other plans for this particular moolah," Stanley said with a grin. "Only to pull it off, I'll need your help, and McGucket's too."

Fiddleford was staring dreamily at the machine as it stacked up and wrapped another five thousand dollars in fifties. "Cabbage ain't as purty as roses, but boiled, they tastes plumb terribobble," he announced. He'd probably be all right in the morning.

"What are you up to?" Stanford asked suspiciously.

"Somethin' I thought about for a year now," Stanley told him. "I was tryin' to find a way to promote it, but with this—I think we can do it."

"But what?"

Stan put his arm around his brother's shoulder. "A good deed, Poindexter. A real good deed."

And that's all he would, for the moment, say.

* * *

The End


End file.
